


The Keys to The Kingdom

by pinecontents



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Never Met, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Slow Burn, Wizards, cat content, messing with unknown powers, video games - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:28:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 32,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25813561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinecontents/pseuds/pinecontents
Summary: A night of insomnia leads Link to download a strange video game, which immediately derails his life. As he plays, he discovers that magic is real, but it isn't easy or useful, and a spell to identify his soulmate ends up making Link question a lot of what he knows about himself.
Relationships: Rhett McLaughlin/Link Neal
Comments: 194
Kudos: 95





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A million thanks to @sohox and @secondhand-watermelon for their support, encouragement, typo fixing, and friendship.

“Here goes nothing, I guess.” Link flipped the switch on his activator. Nothing happened. He glared at it. After all the time, money, and frustration he’d poured into making it, the damn thing should light up or vibrate or hum or _something_. Instead, it just sat there on his kitchen counter, a blue pencil box with a metal switch from a 1927 Philco radio cabinet sticking out a little hole in the lid. Inside, a tangle of wires and threads wrapped around unidentifiable shapes was visible through the translucent plastic. “You little piece of shit,” Link muttered.

It had been eighteen months since Link had learned that magic was real. Late one night when he couldn’t sleep, he found himself hitting the “random” button on Reddit, hoping to find something boring enough that it would make him fall asleep. Instead, he found a subreddit for a video game called “The Keys to The Kingdom”. The subreddit was tiny, with fewer than a hundred users, and inactive. There were only eight threads, and no one had made a post in over six years.

Link wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon and didn’t have anything better to do, so he visited the website linked in the subreddit. It looked like it hadn’t been updated since the mid '90s. There was a banner reading “The Keys to The Kingdom” in a pseudo Gothic font, flanked with burning torch gifs, and a single button reading “Download”. Link knew better than to download things from sketchy websites, but he did it anyway. There was something about The Keys to The Kingdom that drew him in.

The file size was surprisingly small, and soon Link was able to launch the game. There were no graphics, just a black screen with a single line of glowing green text, like something from the earliest days of home computing. A cursor blinked below it.

**GIVEN THE CHOICE BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE OR POWER, WHAT WOULD YOU CHOOSE?**

**> >>**

Link chose knowledge, and the next time he looked at a clock, it was 4:48am. His cat Checkers was curled up next to him on the couch, snoring. He obviously had more sense than Link, who had to be up for work in less than three hours.

The next evening, after a hellishly sleep-deprived day at work, he opened his laptop and went back to The Keys to The Kingdom subreddit.

It wasn’t there. Link stared stupidly at the “Sorry, there aren’t any communities on Reddit with that name” message. He tried the '90s download website next. 

_404 Not Found_

“The fuck?” Link whispered to himself. The sites weren’t even in his history. He minimized his browser window. The game icon, the same torch that had been on the download website, was still on his desktop. “This better work,” he mumbled as he clicked on it.

The game launched without error, starting where Link had left off last night. He glared at it suspiciously.

The Keys to The Kingdom became an ongoing obsession for Link. It was a text-based interactive adventure game in the style of Zork. The game supplied prompts, and Link typed in actions. He played the role of a scholar who travelled from place to place, solving various puzzles in order to earn the titular Keys.

The difficulty ramped up sharply after he got the first Key. As there were no graphics, Link ended up purchasing a large, hardcover bullet journal that he used to plot maps and draw puzzle diagrams. They grew increasingly more elaborate and Link began to feel like there was some underlying pattern in the paths that his character followed and the tasks he completed. He bought a roll of parchment paper at the grocery store and laid it over his maps and diagrams, tracing different shapes until they felt right. Checkers helped as much as he could, batting at Link’s pencil and settling down on his papers like a fluffy black and white rain cloud.

Link could find nothing about the game online. There was another puzzle video game called “Keys Of The Kingdom”, but it was completely different. It didn’t matter if he used Google, Bing, or Duck Duck Go, there were no results. Link posted about it on a few different subreddits, trying to find someone, _anyone_ , who’d heard of it, but it was like his posts didn’t exist. They got no views, no votes, no comments. It was the same on Yahoo, Quora, and every other website he tried.

It was insane, the entire thing was insane. Link would have thought he’d dreamed the whole thing up, but there it was on his laptop, and he had a notebook full of things he never would have been able to create by himself.

Link told a few different friends about the game, but none of them showed any interest. It was infuriating to tell someone about this strange, exciting new thing in his life, only to be met with a nod and a bored, “Sounds cool, man.” Whatever force kept his internet posts from gaining traction was obviously at work in real life as well. After he tried to show the game to someone in person and his laptop crashed to a blue screen of death three times in a row, Link gave up and decided to keep The Keys to himself. At least he could talk to Checkers, who rarely paid attention to anything Link said. It didn’t hurt his feelings when Checkers ignored him.

After that, the only thing to do was to keep playing.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Link tried his best to keep The Keys from taking over his life. He went to work, went to the gym, hung out with his work friends, and worked on his other projects, but The Keys were always in the back of his mind.

It was the strangest game. There wasn’t really a storyline, and Link’s character had no traits or personality other than “a seeker of knowledge”. He had no idea how many keys there were, what their purpose was, or what he should expect when he had all of them. There was just no lore in the game.

As for the setting… Link’s scholar character was given directions by NPCs, who were all as nondescript as he was. They were merely identified as a shopkeeper, a librarian, a soldier, and that was all. The directions would include things like, “the caves” or “the stone bridge over the river,” but again, there was no elaboration.

During the search for the first Key, the city Link’s character explored seemed to be from a generic Medieval European fantasy. That tied in with the whole concept of a quest and a kingdom, so Link was surprised the whole fantasy trope was completely dropped after he earned the first Key.

Link thought a lot about the way the tone and difficulty shifted so dramatically after the first Key. The game (although it might not be accurate to call it a game, Link thought. He certainly wasn’t having much fun) seemed to protect itself, with the vanishing websites and ignored comments. Maybe the first level was so dull in order to weed out dilettantes, so that only serious players with determination would continue.

At first, he thought the game had been made in the early '80s, based on the faux terminal styling with the black screen and green text. That theory went out the window, though, when the puzzles began including references to technology that didn’t exist until decades later. One of them relied on knowledge of Graffiti, an electronic shorthand alphabet used on '90s Palm Pilots. Even getting to the point of figuring out that the puzzle referred to Palm Pilots took Link nearly a week. The puzzles were fiendishly difficult, and Link had no idea how anyone would be able to solve them without the internet at their fingertips.

Link had suspected there was something unusual about the game from the moment he tried to go back to the subreddit and it was gone. His invisible comments only added to his feelings, but Link didn’t truly begin to believe there was something uncanny about it until the dreams started.

He’d started having Keys to The Kingdom dreams not long after finding the game, which wasn’t surprising because he spent most of his waking hours thinking about or playing it. Those dreams, though, always featured the black terminal window with the green letters, and Link worked on the game in his dreams much as he did in real life. The dream puzzles were nonsensical and meaningless. Link sometimes woke up annoyed that his subconscious couldn’t be more helpful and work on the _actual_ puzzles he was trying to solve.

The new dreams were different. Instead of Link drawing a diagram in his journal while he worked on a puzzle, Dream Link drew a diagram in his journal _before_ looking at the puzzle. This wasn’t something Waking Link would do, or even _could_ do. The puzzle diagrams tended to resemble complicated knotwork, and he had no idea how they were created.

At first, Link disregarded the new dream, but after the third consecutive night he had it, he put his journal and a pencil onto his nightstand. On the fourth night, he was able to trace the general outline of the diagram, and finished it by the sixth night. His dreams returned to normal after that.

Two days later, when he reached the final puzzle for earning the fifth key, Link was completely unsurprised to find that for the first time, the game gave him no clues or instructions on how to draw the required diagram.

That wasn’t a problem, though. Link had it drawn out already.


	2. Chapter 2

After six months, Link had earned eight Keys and filled three journals full of notes and diagrams. He had a few more dreams about diagrams, but he also began noticing patterns in his waking life. Tiling on a bathroom floor, a cabled sweater, flower petals… Link took pictures with his phone to reference later when he got home and started drawing his own diagrams. He thought that maybe the entire point of the game was to teach him to recognize, identify, and reinterpret patterns.

The dream diagram was used on the sixth Key. The seventh Key used a diagram that was part dream, part Link finishing it with patterns he’d found out in the world. The eighth Key came without any dreams or clues. Link was on his own.

He decided to base his diagram on a floral lace dress he’d come across in Target a few days ago. Link pulled the pictures up on his phone and began plotting it out on a fresh page in his bullet journal. He was deeply engrossed, but when he was about halfway through, Link caught something moving out of the corner of his eye. It wasn’t Checkers, who was snoozing in his usual spot next to Link.

Link’s laptop sat off to the side, open to the eighth Key puzzle. The thing that caught his eye was the word **IN** changing into **ON** as he finished part of his diagram. Link stared at the screen, then back down at his journal. He carefully erased the last line he’d drawn while keeping his eyes glued to the screen. **ON** changed back into **IN**.

“No _way_ ,” Link breathed in disbelief. He redrew the line, erased it, redrew and erased again. **IN** and **ON** flickered back and forth. The game was being changed as a result of his actions _away_ from the laptop.

Link sat back and considered the implications of that. If his diagram could change the game, could the game change the diagram? Would a different diagram give different results? Was the game the only thing a diagram could influence?

Was this… magic?

Link didn’t believe in magic. He’d always been a skeptic, he didn’t care for fantasy books or movies, and he had a STEM degree. Astrology annoyed him, and climate change deniers, flat earthers, and antivaxxers made him incredibly angry.

But was there any other way to explain it? The vanishing websites, the invisible comments, the dreams, and now this. Link didn’t know what other explanation there could be. He decided he might as well call it magic. It wasn’t like anyone else knew about it.

Link went back to his diagram. He carefully kept track of what changed in the puzzle as he drew. By the time he was finished with his drawing, there had been five changes to the wording of the puzzle. What had previously been nonsensical was now straightforward.

He typed in the answer and pushed enter. A crude ASCII image of a skeleton key appeared.

**YOU HAVE EARNED THE EIGHTH KEY.**

**YOUR JOURNEY WILL CONTINUE.**

“Not tonight, it won’t,” Link said, and exited the game and closed his laptop. He took off his glasses and rubbed his face. He needed to shave.

Not for the first time, he wondered what the point of The Keys to The Kingdom was. Part of it, obviously, was to teach him magic ( _magic_!). But to what end? What purpose did it serve? What was he supposed to do with it? And why Link, of all people? There were other people out there--there was a subreddit, after all (or rather, there _had_ been a subreddit). He couldn’t remember what any of the threads had been about, though, and had no idea what he could have had in common with the others.

Link ran a finger over his Target lace diagram. Did the designer know it had power? Or maybe the design was given power by Link. If any of his friends knew about the game, he’d have one of them draw it and see, but that wasn’t an option. He sighed and closed his journal. Earning The Keys to The Kingdom was a lonely task.

~*~*~*~**~*~*~*~*~*~*

The ninth Key required Link to build his own diagram off an existing pattern (he based it on a spiraling succulent he saw in the floral department at the grocery store). It didn’t change the wording of the puzzle like the floral Target diagram did, so he figured the point was probably to get him thinking about drawing his own patterns.

That wasn’t something he normally did. Link wasn’t artistically inclined, and once he got out of elementary school, he stopped creating visual art almost entirely. He had other creative outlets: writing goofy little songs, building Lego sets, and coloring books.

But the long-dormant visual part of his brain had been awakened now, and The Keys to The Kingdoms was training it for… something. Pattern recognition and pattern creation. To what end, he did not know.

The tenth Key took Link two months to figure out. The puzzle required him to create a diagram completely from scratch. It was incredibly frustrating. Link tried sixteen different patterns before the seventeenth turned **EITHER** into **NEITHER**.

“ _Finally_.” Link sagged in relief. Each diagram took so long to draw that every failed attempt had taken him a day, sometimes two, to figure out that they weren’t right. It had nearly been four weeks since he’d started working on the tenth Key, and he’d been beginning to worry that he wasn’t going to be able to figure it out.

It wasn’t until the next night that Link finished the diagram. He glanced at the clock before he typed the answer into the terminal. 11:48pm, still relatively early by his standards. He entered his answer.

The ASCII key appeared on the screen, along with a tinny fanfare that made Link nearly jump out of his skin. Checkers swiveled his ears around, but didn’t lift his head. The game had never made any sound before. He watched wide-eyed as the ASCII key got smaller and nine more joined it on the screen in a crudely animated circle. Inside, a shortened bit.ly url appeared.

Link glared at it suspiciously. It had been nine months since he’d first downloaded the game, and he couldn’t quite believe that he’d… won? Would that be the right word? The Keys to The Kingdom had not provided any reward other than the crappy ASCII keys and the minor dopamine hit of solving a puzzle.

“What am I gonna do with myself now?” Link said to himself as he copied the url and pasted it into his browser. He hadn’t worked on The Keys every evening of the past nine months, but it had by far been the majority of them. Link was glad he hadn’t kept track of how many hours he’d spent on The Keys. There had been times that it had been nearly a second full-time job for him.

A website loaded. It was the same as the original website where he’d downloaded the game what seemed like years ago. Instead of “The Keys to The Kingdom”, the banner now read “Claim Your Reward”. The download button was there, too, surrounded by ten crudely animated sparkling keys.

Link hit download. The file was much, much larger than the original game. He propped his cheek on his hand and watched the download progress. “Checkers, if this is Keys 2, I’m throwing this thing out the window.”

Whatever it was, it took so long to download that Link got bored, went to the kitchen and made a sandwich, ate it standing at the counter, and washed his plate. By the time he got back to the couch, it was only at 68 percent. Link groaned. He was dying to see what it was, but he was also exhausted. He decided to set his alarm a half hour early, so he could check it before work.

He left his laptop on the coffee table, downloading the mysterious file, and went to bed.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The next morning, Link shot out of bed as soon as his alarm went off. He woke up his laptop. The browser window was closed and there was a new icon on the desktop: a silver key. Link clicked on it eagerly.

It was a zip file. Link made a frustrated noise before starting the unzip. He made a smoothie, brushed his teeth and shaved, and got dressed for work while it decompressed. By the time he was back in the living room, everything was ready.

It was a bunch of PDFs. Some of them had straightforward names:

_Activator.pdf_

_Chestnut.pdf_

While others were more opaque:

_Smidv14.pdf_

_Stanlo.pdf_

Activator.pdf was first on the list, so Link opened it. It was 114 pages. The first one appeared to be a scanned image of a page typed on a manual typewriter. He sat on the couch and leaned forward to read.

_ THE ACTIVATOR _

__ _A device for eliminating the need to draw sigils, diagrams, and symbols while running protocols in the real world_

Link screeched in disbelief and anger and slammed his laptop shut.


	3. Chapter 3

Link was so pissed about spending nine months working on puzzles and diagrams only to find that there was (infomercial announcer voice) _a better way_ that he didn’t open any of the PDFs for a week. Instead, he actually went out with his work friends and spent a few nights catching up on movies he hadn’t seen.

Eventually he calmed down and curiosity got the better of him. He reopened activator.pdf and began reading. Before getting into the instructions, the author explained a little of what “running protocols” (what Link had been thinking of as magic) was and how it came to be. Several pages of the document were missing and other parts were censored with a black marker, but the gist of it was that early computer scientists found that some people could manipulate reality using a combination of drawn figures and a computer. It didn’t say anything about The Keys to The Kingdom, so Link guessed that must have come later.

The activator was a device invented in 1972 or 1973 (the date was mostly censored, but Link could make it out a little) that eliminated both the need for having a computer present and for drawing a diagram. When using an activator, the paper claimed, a “practitioner could execute protocols easily in the field”, because the activator would automatically calculate and invisibly project a diagram. Or something. There was a page or two missing, but it sounded pretty good to Link until he read the materials and instructions.

“Platinum wire, Intel 808 processor,” Link read to himself. That seemed pretty straightforward. “Handspun silk thread? Trade beads? A ‘satisfying switch’? The hell does that mean? ‘Satisfying switch’?” He scrolled a little more and laughed in disbelief. “ _Whale oil_? Where the fuck do you get _whale oil_?”

Link shook his head and opened chestnut.pdf instead. It was a much shorter document, with instructions on determining if a sample of wood was from an American chestnut tree. There was no mention of an activator, so he decided to give it a try. The first step would be to get a piece of chestnut wood, so he got online to see if there were any chestnut trees in his area.

Answer: No. In fact, the American chestnut was nearly extinct. Link chewed on his thumbnail as he considered this. Ten minutes on eBay later, he’d purchased a reclaimed chestnut board that the seller claimed was from a fallen barn. With shipping, it was $10.32.

It took a month and a half for Link to get the spell to work (no way was he calling it a protocol). He ended up pulling The Keys to The Kingdom on his laptop so it could idle on the final screen in the background while he worked out his diagram.

When the white slip of paper on the chestnut board turned yellow and the other slips on the random sticks he’d picked up outside stayed white, Link leapt up out of his chair with a shout of triumph and excitement. Checkers launched himself off the couch and scrabbled off across the wood floor in alarm. “Sorry, buddy!” Link called after him.

It was _real_! Magic was real. Using nothing more than a pencil, a piece of paper, and his laptop, Link had physically changed an object in the real world. Was there any practical real-world use for this spell? Probably not, given how stupidly complicated it was, but it _worked_.

That night, Link dreamed of casting spells like a wizard in a book or movie, only his wand was a pencil.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Goddamnit, where the _fuck_ do you get whale oil?” Link slammed his hand down on the counter. In the six months since he’d worked the chestnut spell, he’d been unable to make any of the others work, so he decided to build the damn activator.

Most of the materials, even the strange or rare ones, were easily found online. Link couldn’t imagine how difficult it had been to source everything in 1972. Whale oil was still legal at that point, but whatever supply had been around then had apparently been depleted in the past fiftyish years.

During his search, Link discovered that eBay banned marine mammal products. There were a few private auction websites that had sold bottles of whale oil or whale candles in the past, but nothing current. Link noticed that most of them originated in Massachusetts, so he eventually took a week off work with the express purpose of visiting every antique store in Nantucket, New Bedford, and the surrounding area.

Link had lost track of how many shops he’d visited when, on his fifth day, he found a flat, rectangular bottle with an ornate label. It was in a cardboard box full of random glass bottles in the back of a cramped, dusty shop. _Sperm Sewing Machine Oil_ , it said with a little scene of a boat of sailors trying to harpoon a whale with a sailing ship in the background. It was all very Moby Dick. There was about half an inch of golden fluid at the bottom.

“Wow.” Link took a couple deep breaths. His hands were shaking so much he was afraid he was going to drop the bottle. He took it up to the counter. “Is it real, do you think?” he asked the little old lady at the register.

“Oh, aye,” she said as she wrapped it in newspaper. “My mother used this same type when I was a little girl.”

“Wow,” Link said again. “That’s wild.”

The old lady collected his money and handed over the parcel. “You have a nice day now, young man.”

“Oh, I will.” Link practically skipped out the door.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

He spent the remaining days of his trip eating lobster rolls and doing touristy things, including a trip to the New Bedford Whaling Museum, which had plenty of whale oil on display. Link was glad he’d already found some, or he might have lost his mind from seeing it so close but yet so far. 

As Link struggled to follow the typed directions from 1972, he realized that the layout of the activator seemed familiar. He pulled out his Keys to The Kingdom journals and flipped through them. As his character travelled around the generic world, Link had sketched out a rough map of his travels.

The map and the layout of the activator were extremely similar. Link didn’t know if The Keys to The Kingdom was based on the activator layout, or if they both echoed some larger, unseen pattern.

Link knew exactly which spell he wanted to try one his activator was finished. Almost all of the “protocols” were for things as complicated and useless as the chestnut identifier. There was one called, “St. Anthony’s Lost Object Locator” that seemed fairly useful at first, but on closer inspection it would only find objects that were nonmetallic, no more than 2.37 meters from the activator, and blue in color. (Link, a lapsed Baptist, had to look up St. Anthony and found that he was the patron saint of lost objects.)

The spell he’d chosen to try was, “Soulmate Identifier Version 4”. The actual instructions were fairly straightforward and only took up one page. The rest of the PDF was a collection of warnings, discussions, and cautionary tales about identifying your soulmate.

One of the documents was a five-page letter from a woman who worked as a computer programmer. She didn’t say how she came across the spell or learned magic. Link assumed whoever she was writing to already knew. What she did say, though, was that she’d been married for twenty years with three children, and the spell destroyed her life. It revealed that her soulmate was another woman, somewhere in Asia, but there was no way to identify or find her. The letter writer became obsessed with this woman and spent all her time watching her, feeling overwhelmed with jealousy towards the other woman’s family and sinking into depression because they couldn’t be together. Eventually, the letter writer left her family and spent years traveling around Asia, looking for her soulmate, until one day she cast the spell, and it didn’t show anything. The letter writer speculated that her soulmate might have died. By that point, she was divorced, broke, and living in postwar rural Vietnam. The letter ended in the middle of a sentence at the bottom of the page, and the final part was missing.

“I wonder what happened to her after that,” Link said to Checkers, who blinked sleepily up at him. Link was single, and he didn’t believe in soulmates, so he figured he’d be okay. 

Spells that used the activator usually required a couple props. This one asked for a knife and “two halves of a whole”. Link used an apple for his whole. He sliced it in half, put each half cut side down on either end of the cutting board, and then used the knife to cut through the air. Up from one apple half, across, and down to the other apple half. 

“Here goes nothing.” He flipped the switch on the activator, which made a nice, solid click. Nothing happened. “You little piece of shit.”

Then, with a strange shimmer, the “window” Link cut in the air suddenly showed a view into someone else’s living room.

“Oh!” He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it was not a guy with a beard sitting on a couch, drinking a beer. There was no sound, but Link thought he might be watching sports. He leaned forward to get a closer look. The bearded guy was dressed in a t-shirt and joggers and looked to be about Link’s age. There was no indication of where in the world he might be. The living room was generic enough that it could have been in any number of places, and Link couldn’t see a clock.

The image dissolved. “No, no, nononono.” Link frantically scrabbled for his paring knife and activator. He recut the window, flipped the switch, and waited. Nothing happened. Link tried again with the same result. “Fuck!” He slapped the knife down onto the counter.

Link now understood why the woman who wrote the letter blamed this spell for ruining her life. A thirty second glimpse of a stranger lounging on his couch had changed everything for Link. He’d never wanted anything in his life as much as he wanted to find this man, and he knew he wasn’t going to be able to rest until he did.

“Hooooly shit. Okay.” Link stepped away from the counter and ran his hands through his own hair as he paced around the room. “Wow. I think I might have really fucked up here.”


	4. Chapter 4

A frantic rereading of the instructions revealed why the spell wouldn’t work: it required a fresh “whole” each time. Link munched on an apple half as he considered that. Did it have anything to do with soulmates being two halves of a whole? Or, like everything else in the spells, was it completely random and nonsensical?

It was getting late. Link briefly considered finding other things in his apartment to cut in half, but somehow managed to head to bed, where he thought about the bearded man until he fell asleep.

On his way home from work the next day, he stopped at the store and bought a bag of grapes.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Eighteen grapes later, this is what Link had learned:

\--each window lasted 37 seconds

\--his cell phone wouldn’t take a picture of the window

\--the bearded man was very serious about making chili

\--Checkers either couldn’t see or was completely uninterested in the window

\--Link didn’t really like grapes as much as he thought he did

He ate the grape halves anyway. The window looked in at the bearded man in a random direction, but it usually showed a three-quarter view from the left-hand side. It was always the same distance away. Link suspected that if he actually understood how any of this worked, and if the spell had been worked with a diagram instead of using the activator, he’d be able to control the ‘camera’. As it was, he just sort of had to take what he could get.

Link looked down at his journal, where he’d started a list of things he’d noticed about the bearded guy. He tapped the eraser of his mechanical pencil against the paper as he read.

_Blond hair (lt brown?) kinda curly_

_Short beard_

_3 different kinds of beans--why?_

_Green hoodie_

_Wears shoes in the house (ugh)_

_Nice kitchen_

_Probably not THAT far away if he’s making dinner right now_

It was hard to get an idea of what sort of person this guy was from an hour’s worth of peeks at him putting a pot of chili together. There was no sound, of course, so Link didn’t know if he was listening to music, but if he was, he certainly didn’t dance around like Link did when he cooked. Of course, Link’s cooking wasn’t nearly as elaborate as the multi-bean, seared steak, fire-roasted pepper meal he’d witnessed being created. Even if the bearded guy _hadn’t_ been his soulmate (a concept that Link was still skeptical of, despite his intense, immediate pull towards the other man), Link would have wanted to meet him just to try that chili.

Link cut another grape in half and sliced a window into the air. He wasn’t entirely sure how his life got to the point where he wanted to spend his evening watching a stranger (here he flipped the chunky switch on his activator and waited for the other man to show up) load his dishwasher, but he certainly didn’t mind.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Do you think he knows about me?” Link asked Checkers. It had been a few days since he first worked the soulmate spell, and he’d looked in on his bearded guy at least ten times a day since then. Link had eaten all the grapes and switched to pretzels sticks snapped in half. “Like, do you think he can tell that something changed? Or would he have to see me? Maybe he just has a creepy ‘I’m being watched’ feeling all the time.”

Link had been thinking about the concept of soulmates a lot lately. Were they rare, or did everyone have one? Surely there were some people who actually met their soulmates without knowing about it beforehand. How had whoever wrote the spell figured it out, and what were the previous versions like?

He still didn’t completely believe in soulmates. None of the documents attached to the spell had any positive experiences. Maybe all it did was enchant the practitioner with false visions. Link hoped not. He’d feel really, really stupid if that was the case.

On the other hand, if the spell wasn’t showing him a real person, it was an incredibly impressive fake. So far, Link had only checked in on him after work, but he’d caught his mystery man cooking a couple different meals, eating takeout, watching basketball (unfortunately, Link hadn’t been able to make out who the teams were), fooling around on his laptop, and unbuttoning his pants to sit on the toilet. The last one made Link swipe the pretzels sticks off the table onto the floor, cutting off the image. He might be a voyeur, but he had his limits. A man needed privacy in the bathroom.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Over the weekend, Link checked in on the bearded man at a few different times of day. He caught him sleeping late (or so Link assumed. He didn’t know what the time difference was), sprawled out shirtless with a sheet draped across him; out to brunch with some friends (the bearded guy was apparently a big eater. He had twice as much food as everyone else at the table); working in a study full of books; shooting hoops with a few other guys at a park (this was when Link realized that this man was not just tall, he was _tall_ ), and vacuuming his rug.

Basically, he was a normal guy.

At some point, Link realized that he could make the window any size he wanted. He put a pretzel half on either side of his living room and walked across the couch to slice through the air as high as he could reach. When he flipped the switch on his activator, the window that appeared was big enough that the bearded man was nearly life size.

Link’s breath caught in his throat. The view was the usual three-quarter, and it was almost like the other man was there in his living room. He was sitting on his couch, watching something funny, because he threw his head back in laughter.

This close, Link could see that his eyes were gray, or maybe green, and his hair had little golden highlights that weren’t evident in the smaller window. When he smiled, his cheeks puffed up and crow's feet crinkled around his eyes.

Link was sure no one had ever been more fascinating.

He was so enchanted that he didn’t notice Checkers headed to the couch until the cat was right in front of it, crouched to launch himself onto the couch, which was behind the window.

“Ah, shit!” Link reached over to grab him, overbalanced, and fell into the window. For a split second as he toppled over, he imagined that he’d land on the floor of the other man’s house, holding an angry cat. Instead, all that happened was a wave of pins and needles all over his body and an acidic taste in his mouth. The image vanished.

Checkers yowled. Link released him and clambered to his feet. “God damn it, Checkers. You’re a shitty familiar, you know that? Cats are supposed to _help_ with magic.” 

Checkers ignored him and stalked out of the room, tail held high. Link flipped off his fluffy backside. “Asshole.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

After a couple weeks, Link got the bright idea to bring his activator to work. He wanted to see if he could figure out what sort of job his mystery man had. His plan was to lock himself in the bathroom over lunch and take a few peeks.

What he actually did was drop the activator on the floor as he took it out of his bag. It hit the ground on its corner, and the pencil box popped open. The contents, which looked like a random collection of junk, fell out onto the carpet next to his desk.

“Oh, noooo,” Link whispered as he knelt down and scooped the odds and ends back into the box. A distinctive smell hit his nose, a very ancient and fishlike smell. “Crap!”

The little vial of whale oil had opened and was leaking all over the other contents.

He hadn’t put all of his precious whale oil into the activator, of course. For one thing, the bottle would take up too much room. Instead, he’d decanted a few drops into a tiny glass bottle. Fixing his activator would be the easy part. Explaining the smell to his officemate, on the other hand…

As if on cue, Leslie walked into the room and pulled up short just as Link stuffed the broken activator back in his bag. “What the hell is that?” she said, sniffing the air. “It’s like… a fish market basement.”

“I dunno, maybe someone microwaved fish,” Link offered.

Leslie snorted. “I wouldn’t eat anything that smelled like that.”

“Yeah… hey, I have to run out to my car, but I’ll be back in a minute, okay?”

Several hours later, when he got out of work, Link really, really regretted leaving whale oil to bake in his hot car.


	5. Chapter 5

Link had to order replacements for a few of the more delicate components of his activator. It took nearly three weeks for the last of them to arrive, so he went back to spells that could be worked with a diagram in the meantime.

The Lost Object spell was one of the only ones that had instructions for both diagrams and activator. Link couldn’t get it to work, though. After a lot of trial and error, he figured it was because he was looking for an object that was hidden (either by himself or an unsuspecting visitor), not lost.

When he got the activator up and running, Link took a half day off of work so he could spy on the bearded guy from the comfort of his own home, as nature intended. He got everything set up and flipped the switch to see…

The bearded guy standing in an open plan office with high ceilings and big potted plants, talking to a woman with delicate features and long strawberry-blonde hair, as they leaned over a table covered in index cards. The woman reached out and switched the position of two of the cards, and the bearded guy nodded in approval.

He was wearing an untucked plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, dark cuffed jeans, and waxed leather boots. _Sexy lumberjack cosplay_ , a little voice whispered in the back of Link’s mind. He ignored it and leaned forward, squinting, as he tried to read what was on the cards. The image vanished.

Link grunted in frustration. The next window he made was much larger. The view on this one was from behind, and Link craned his neck as if that would help him see over the mystery man’s shoulder. He could see that each index card had a sentence or two written in dark marker, but he still couldn’t make them out. Maybe it was time to make a really big wall-sized window.

Suddenly, the bearded man turned his head and glanced around as if he were looking for something. His gaze landed on Link, who was suddenly sure that the man could _see_ him. He gasped and jerked back in his chair, nearly toppling over. By the time he’d regained his balance, the window had dissolved.

Link regarded the activator suspiciously. It looked like it always did, a blue plastic box filled with random crap, although now it was sealed with blue painter’s tape. Maybe something got screwed up when he repaired it.

Maybe it was time to take a break.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Link was kind of ashamed of himself, in retrospect. He gathered up his journals and the activator and all its spare parts and hid them away in his closet. Magic might be real, soulmates might be real, but what was also real was how creepy it was to spy on someone repeatedly.

Real creepy.

He got the activator back out less than two weeks later. Apparently part of the whole soulmate thing was an inability to stop thinking about the other person. The only reason Link made it three weeks before was because the activator had been broken.

“Checkers, I’m telling you this not because you care,” Link began. Checkers looked up from the couch cushion at the sound of his name. “But if I say it out loud, I might actually do it. I’m only gonna look at him once a day. Maybe twice. Unless, you know, it’s the weekend.”

Checkers blinked slowly at him, and then began licking his leg. Link sighed. He’d never thought about having a cat, but when he found a tiny, filthy kitten crying in the parking lot at work, he just couldn’t leave it there. Later, when the vet asked if he wanted to take the kitten with him or leave it to send to a rescue, Link impulsively took it home. He figured he’d contact the rescue when the kitten was a little bigger and stronger.

That had been three years ago. Checkers was now 18 pounds of solid flesh under a soft, fluffy white coat with black splotches. He knocked stuff off the table, sprawled in doorways making himself into a tripping hazard, and shed on absolutely everything, but every night he curled up next to Link and purred like a motorboat. Link adored him.

Link prepared a window with a Nilla wafer snapped in half (the spell didn’t specify that the halves of the whole had to be edible. Link just used snacks because they were always around and easy to clean up) and flipped the activator switch. The air shimmered and the bearded man appeared.

He was in a kitchen, but not his kitchen. There was an older woman stirring something on the stove as the bearded man leaned against the counter. They were both laughing. As Link watched, an older man walked over with two bottles of beer and handed one to the bearded guy. They clinked their beers together and the image dissolved.

“His parents, you think?” Link asked Checkers, who was washing his face. “I think so.” Link ate the broken Nilla wafer and snapped another in half. He picked up his little paring knife and paused.

_I’m only gonna look at him once a day._

Link frowned. Of course the bearded guy would be doing something new and interesting right after Link put limits on himself.

He got up, put the knife back in the silverware drawer, settled back onto the couch, and turned on the TV. Checkers climbed into his lap, and they watched a few old Project Runway episodes, steadfastly ignoring the activator on the table.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~**~*~**

Something had changed after Link broke and repaired his activator. Before, the bearded guy had seemed totally oblivious. Now, whenever Link cast the spell, there was about a fifty percent chance that the bearded guy seemed to sense him. He’d look around, crane his neck, and wave his hand around like he was trying to disperse a cloud of gnats. Link tinkered with the components in his activator, to no avail. It did help him stick to his promise of only looking once a day, though.

As weeks turned to months, the novelty of the soulmate spell wore off for Link. He didn’t forget about his soulmate (he _couldn’t_ ), but he’d figured out the other man’s basic schedule, hobbies, and haunts. Occasionally, Link would catch him doing something unusual, like playing mini golf with friends, but on weekday nights after work, he just relaxed at home, same as Link.

Link had never had much luck with relationships, and knowing that there was someone out there for him (even though that someone knew nothing about Link, and Link had absolutely no luck figuring out who he was or where he lived) was comforting. It gave him a warm little spark whenever he flipped the switch of his activator and the window appeared, even if it just showed the bearded guy sprawled out on the couch watching basketball _again_. He was perfect and perfectly unobtainable.

So it was a bit of a shock when Link activated the window one night to find the bearded man on the couch as usual, only this time he had a piece of paper taped to his chest. Link leaned in and squinted. He nearly passed out when he made out the letters.

_GLASSES GUY_

_CALL ME_


	6. Chapter 6

Somehow the bearded guy had not only figured out that he really was being spied on, he knew what Link looked like. After he got over his shock, Link pulled the window back up and wrote the bearded guy’s number neatly in his bullet journal, with all the other observations he’d made over the past months.

Link stared down at the number. He didn’t recognize the area code, but that didn’t mean anything. He chewed his lip and turned his phone over and over in his hand as he considered calling. This was what he’d been looking for, right? A way to contact this man.

It felt like cheating to have the phone number handed to him, and Link wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with it now that he had it. It was one thing to imagine what his life would be like with a soulmate, but the thought of actually _doing_ anything made Link incredibly anxious. What if the bearded guy called him a creep and told him to fuck off (likely)? 

What if he didn’t?

Link carefully closed the journal and set aside his phone. He went into the kitchen and made himself a tuna melt (saving the tuna water for Checkers, of course) and ate while trying to decide what to do. If he didn’t call, what would the bearded guy do? Just hang out with the sign on his chest every night? How did he know what Link looked like, anyway? Did he have access to spells? Link had never seen anything like an activator or a diagram in his house, so if the bearded man _was_ a magic user, it was probably through some other technique.

In retrospect, Link thought as he dialed the phone after washing his dinner dishes, it had been stupid to think that he wouldn’t call. He’d read the letter from the woman who ended up alone in Vietnam, and all the other documentation that came with the soulmate spell. Activating the window did something to a person, flipped a switch inside them (a 1927 Philco radio cabinet switch, perhaps?) and set them down a path that there was no getting off of.

Link was enchanted, and he hoped the spell wouldn’t wear off.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Link sat on the couch vibrating with nerves as the phone rang. Someone picked up.

“Hello?”

A male voice, smooth and rich. Link leaned forward and flipped the switch of the activator. He’d set up a window on his coffee table, and he wanted to see the mystery man’s face when he realized who was calling.

The image shimmered into place. The bearded guy was in his kitchen, _CALL ME_ sign still on his chest. It looked like he’d been serving himself a bowl of ice cream. Ben & Jerry’s, it seemed. Link approved.

“Um, hi. I’m, uh, I’m the glasses guy.”

Link watched in amusement as the bearded guy’s jaw dropped as his eyebrows raised. He spun around and paced back and forth in his kitchen, free hand up to his temple.

“You! What… who the fuck _are_ you? And what the fuck are you doing?”

“Uh,” Link said. There was no good way to say this. “My name is Link and… oh god, this sounds so stupid. But I, um, I found a magic spell that shows you your soulmate, and it shows you.”

The bearded man stopped and an expression of exasperated disbelief came over his face. The window faded away. “A magic spell.” 

It wasn’t a question, but Link said, “Yes,” anyway.

“ _Soulmate_?”

“I guess?” Link said. “I’m still not sure I believe in soulmates. At least you’re a real person, though.”

“Oh, you think _you’re_ relieved I’m a real person? For months I thought I was hallucinating.”

“You’re not,” Link said. 

There was a pause. Link imagined the bearded guy standing bewildered in his kitchen, ice cream melting forgotten on the counter. Finally, he said, “Why wouldn’t I be real?”

“I dunno,” Link said. “I thought maybe the spell was just showing me a vision.”

Another pause before the bearded man spoke. “Jesus. I gotta go sit down.”

“What’s your name?” Link asked. He’d tried to come up with a name for the other man, but none seemed right.

“It’s Rhett.”

Rhett. Link thought about his mystery man, bearded and tall and curly-haired. Rhett was the right name. “Nice to meet you, Rhett.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure about that.” Rhett grunted a little as he flopped onto his couch. Link could picture it perfectly in his mind’s eye. He’d certainly seen it enough. “Ok, so who the fuck are you, and what the fuck are you doing to me?”

Link sighed. As wonderful as it was to finally know Rhett’s name and hear his voice, this conversation was probably going to suck. “My name is Link Neal, and I live in LA.” That wasn’t strictly true. Link lived a little ways outside LA, but it was close enough. “About two years ago, I downloaded a game called The Keys to The Kingdom, and at first I thought it was just a puzzle game, but then it got… weird.”

“What kind of name is Link? And weird how?” Rhett asked.

“Charles Lincoln Neal the Third.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah.” Link continued his story. “I had to draw all the diagrams to solve the puzzles, and they got harder and weirder, and then I started dreaming the solutions before I got to the puzzle.”

“Okay....” Rhett said skeptically.

“I know, it sounds so stupid. Anyway, then the diagrams started changing the puzzles as I drew them.”

“Well, yeah. That’s how video games work.”

“No, you don’t understand!” Link said. “I wasn’t making the diagrams in the game. They were pencil on paper.”

“Uh-huh.” Rhett didn’t believe him, at least not fully.

“And when I won the game, it gave me instructions on how to build an activator, which is like… a little machine for doing spells, I guess. I got sixteen spells, too.”

Rhett snorted. “So you’re a wizard?”

“I dunno, maybe?” Link said. “I only ever did two spells.”

“What’s the point of having spells if you don’t use them?”

“They’re _pointless_ spells! You have to put in all this effort and find all these weird ingredients. Like there’s one that requires an object that’s been in your family for four generations, and all it does is make an ice cube smell like chrysanthemums!” Link threw up his free hand in exasperation. Checkers looked up at him from his spot next to Link. “Like, _why_? Who needs that? Why is that even a thing?”

“You have a spell for spying on me.” That wasn’t a question, either. 

Link sighed. This was the part he was dreading. “It’s called Soulmate Identifier Version 4. It makes a window I can see you in. It lasts for 37 seconds and there’s no sound. I didn’t know it would be you.”

“You do realize how fucked up that is, right?” Rhett sounded pissed, and rightfully so.

“Yes, and I’m truly sorry, but…” Link groped for the right words. “This spell… it did something to me. It came with all these warnings about how it ruins peoples’ lives, and I did it anyway.”

“I don’t even know what to say about that,” Rhett said. Link’s brain filled in _you dumbass_. “How long have you been watching me?”

“Um, six months?” Link thought for a moment. “Yeah, about six months, on and off.” He didn’t say _mostly on_. 

“How often do you spy on me?”

It didn’t even occur to Link to lie. “I looked a lot at first, but for the past few months it’s only been once or twice a day, after work.”

That brought a long, annoyed sigh from Rhett. “Like what you see, creep?”

That stung, even though it was true. “I mostly see you cooking or watching TV.” Link remembered one vision from a Saturday night a few months ago: Rhett in a bed in a strange bedroom, a woman with dark hair underneath him… Link had swiped the pretzels off the table as soon as he saw that. It was too far, even for him, and seeing his mystery man with someone else _hurt_. “I saw you on a date once.” Apparently it hadn’t worked out, because he hadn’t seen the dark haired woman again.

Rhett growled.

“I’m sorry!” Link said. “Really, I am truly sorry. I don’t want to be a creep. It’s just… I don’t know, I’ve never been able to keep a relationship going, and the idea that there’s someone out there for me is kind of comforting, I guess, in a hopeful way. Plus, you know, I’m under a spell.”

Another sigh from Rhett. “What if I told you to fuck off?”

“I…” The thought of never seeing Rhett again, with his cheeky smile and strong arms, made Link’s heart ache and his stomach drop, but after talking to Rhett and hearing him, Link would stop. It was one thing to watch an unaware stranger, but Rhett wasn’t unaware, and he wasn’t really a stranger now, either. Link already had enough guilt for what he’d done so far. “I’d get rid of my activator and journals, I guess. Is that what you want me to do?”

Rhett was silent for so long that Link thought the call might have been dropped. “Hello?”

“Yeah, I’m still here,” Rhett answered. “I’m just thinking.”

“Okay.”

“You gotta quit spying on me.”

“I understand.” Link thought about tossing his journals and activator into a bonfire. It made him want to throw up. “I’ll get rid of them.”

“Look, I don’t want to make you stop being a shitty wizard.” Link's mouth quirked up into a little smile at that. “But I need some privacy while I think about this, you know? Can you like… put them in storage or something for a couple weeks?”

“Oh!” Link was incredibly relieved. “Yeah, I can absolutely do that.” 

“So give me two weeks, okay? I’ll text you, since I have your number now.”

“Sounds good.” It was about as good an outcome as Link could hope for. A deadline, the promise of future interaction, and Rhett didn’t seem _too_ pissed at him. “Two weeks.”

“Yeah. Talk to you later, creep.”

“Okay. Bye.”

“Bye.” 

And with that, Rhett was gone. Link looked down at Checkers, who had ignored the entire conversation. “Chex!”

Checkers looked up at him. Link picked him up and rocked him like a baby. “He’s real! And he doesn’t hate me!” Checkers made an annoyed noise, but he was completely relaxed and limp in Link’s arms. “Two weeks! I can’t wait.”


	7. Chapter 7

Link’s phone buzzed on the coffee table not forty-five minutes later. He stretched his arm out, but it was just out of reach. Link sighed. Checkers was asleep on his lap and would run away as soon as he moved. Maybe, if he shifted his weight slowly enough…

Checkers, predictably, launched himself off Link’s bladder and looked up at him reproachfully. “I don’t know why you have to be like that,” Link complained as he snatched the phone and unlocked it. 

Text from: Unknown

Unknown: actually i want to see the game and the pdfs

Link frowned as he saved Rhett’s number into his phone. His first reaction was something along the lines of _I don’t think it’ll work for you_ , but mentions of the game hadn’t slid off Rhett like they had everyone else. Maybe Rhett had a chance. And if not? He’d have hundreds of pages of useless spells, which was pretty much the same for Link.

Link: sure give me your email

That got him Rhett’s last name (McLaughlin), and as soon as he sent the game file and the zip file of spells, Link stuck it into Google. Rhett only lived about an hour away, and he was a producer and lead researcher for a show on YouTube that focused on strange and little known stories in history. Link had actually watched one of their videos before, a compilation of ghost ships. It was okay. Not really his thing, though.

Link wondered what kind of spells the inventor of the activator might have come up with if they’d had access to twenty first century internet.

His phone buzzed again.

Rhett: am i supposed to pick knowledge or power

Link: i did knowledge

Link: i was going to go back and do power but it won’t restart

Rhett: uninstall it and re-download 

Link: download website vanished

Rhett: i’ll send it back to you

Link: ok

Link started to write something else, but another text popped up.

Rhett: don’t text me anything else

Rhett: i want to do this myself

“Then why’d you text me first, dork?” Link rolled his eyes as he dropped it back on the table.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Rhett did not wait two weeks to text Link, which amused Link to no end. He didn’t blame Rhett, though. He would have killed to have someone to talk to about The Keys to The Kingdom while he worked through it.

Rhett: why can’t i find anything about this game online?

Link: idk

Link: maybe you should ask your twitter followers for tips

Link: you have lots of them and they like mysteries

Rhett: don’t read my twitter

Link always let Rhett control their conversations. His activator, journals, whale oil (sealed in a plastic bag), and other spare parts were packed away in a taped up cardboard box, down in his storage area in the parking garage, where it kept company with his Christmas decorations, camping gear, bin of extra Legos, and mountain bike. He thought that he’d be able to resist the temptation to look in on Rhett, now that Rhett had asked him not to, but a little extra distance didn’t hurt.

The texts came through every few days as Rhett came to terms with how frustrating the mere existence of The Keys to The Kingdom was.

Rhett: no one responded to my tweet

Rhett: except a like from someone called cln3

Rhett: which i believe is you

Link: yep

Rhett: i told you not to read my twitter

Link couldn’t wait for him to get past the first Key and into the really frustrating puzzles.

Rhett: how long did it take you to beat this thing

Link: like 10 months

Rhett: FUCK

He never texted Rhett first, and he always let Rhett control the conversations.

Rhett: i tried to tell my co-producer about the game

Rhett: bc it would make a good episode

Rhett: but it was like she couldn’t even hear me

Link: yeah it does that

Link: you’re the only person i’ve been able to tell

Rhett: huh

Rhett: well i couldn’t make an episode without sources anyway

Link knew that at this point, Rhett was only talking to him because of the game, but he still smiled every time he got a text.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The two weeks were up. Link’s phone rang around 7:30. He muted the TV and picked up the phone. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Rhett said. 

“Hang on, I gotta put you on speaker.” Link poked at the screen and set his phone down on the table. “Okay. What’s up?”

“You doin’ something?”

“Um.” Link surveyed his table. It was covered in plastic containers into which he was sorting little plastic bricks. “I’m working on a Lego Millenium Falcon.”

“Aren’t those things like, stupid expensive?”

“Not if you buy it from some guy on Craigslist who tried and failed to build it so he just dumped everything in a couple shoeboxes so it doesn’t have the original box and it’s missing some pieces. And he kept all the figurines.” Link made a face. “Then it’s just like… regular expensive.”

Rhett laughed. “I see why you liked this game.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say I liked it.” Link pried two bricks apart with his brick separator and dropped them into two different containers. “Do _you_ like it?”

“Mm.” Rhett made a swallowing sound. Link guessed he was drinking a beer. “Not really, but I keep working on it.”

“Been there,” Link said.

“I did like three hours of research on teletype machines the other day and I still can’t figure out what the hell that puzzle is asking for.”

Link paused in his brick sorting. “Teletype?”

“Yeah, the puzzle for the second key.”

“I never had a teletype puzzle,” Link said slowly. “I don’t even know what that is.”

Another beer swallow. “I have different puzzles?”

“I think so. Oh!” Link sat up straight. “That reminds me. I uninstalled and reinstalled the game, and the new one was stuck at the final screen, just like the first one. Then I tried it on my shitty old laptop and that was the same, too.”

“What _is_ this?” Rhett asked. He sounded a little bit freaked out.

Link shrugged. “Beats me. You have just as much information as I do.” Rhett groaned in frustration. “Hey, I have a question for you.”

“Shoot,” Rhett said. Link raised his eyebrows. He was a little surprised that Rhett “don’t read my Twitter” McLaughlin agreed to share something.

“So when I first started looking at you, you never seemed to notice anything.” Link flushed as he spoke. He was still guilty and embarrassed about that. ”But I broke my activator and after I fixed it, that’s when you started looking around.”

“Uh huh.” Link imagined Rhett making a _get on with it_ gesture.

“Anyway, I _think_ the soulmate spell works by visualizing one half of a bond,” Link said. “As much as I can figure out from the instructions, anyway.”

“Yeah, I read ‘em, too,” Rhett said. “It’s as good an explanation as any. I mean, we’re not talking about something that follows any sort of rhyme or reason.” Link could hear the rolled eyes in his voice.

“Yeah, so when I fixed the activator, I’m guessing the one-way part got messed up and it started… leaking, I guess, so you could feel it too.”

“Leaking.”

“Well, I don’t know what else to call it.” Behind him, Link could hear Checkers scratching on the bedroom door, where he’d been banished before Link got out his Legos. There was nothing Checkers loved more than to push things off the edge of the table, especially if Link was busy at the time, and Link just couldn’t deal with that right now. A couple hours in the bedroom wouldn’t kill the cat. “But how did you identify me? You don’t have an activator or anything.”

Rhett laughed. “I thought I was losing my mind. I told my co-producer Stevie about it--”

“She’s the blonde woman, right?” Link interrupted.

“God damn it, did you spy on me at work?”

 _Yes_. “No! She’s on your website.”

“Oh.” Rhett was mollified. “She’s always been into metaphysical stuff, crystals and herbs and healing energy and all that shit.”

“Uh huh.” Link snapped a lid onto one of his containers and put it off to the side.

“And she was like, ‘Oh, I have a friend who can test your aura and see if you have any negative energy.’ And I was like sure, whatever, so we went to this tiny little shop that sold all that woo-woo hippy shit and Stevie introduced me to her friend, who is a witch.”

“Really?” Link said. He was very interested to hear about another potential magic user.

“That’s what she said, anyway.” Link imagined a shrug there. “I thought it was bullshit until you called.”

“So what did she say?”

“She flipped around the open sign and we went into this room in the back that was sort of half-fortune teller’s booth and half- office. Like, she had a computer and a printer and stuff, but the monitor was on a stack of books about herbs and there were runes drawn on the printer.” Rhett scoffed at the image.

“If casting a spell on my work printer would make it stop jamming, it might make all this worth it,” Link said. “I sit closest to it so everyone acts like it’s my responsibility.”

“What do you do?” Rhett asked.

“Industrial chemistry.” Link swept a pile of little bricks off the table into his palm and dumped them into a bowl. “I do work on glass that can withstand rapid temperature changes, like for glass-topped stoves.”

“I had one of those until I dropped my cast iron skillet on it and broke it, and it was gonna be more expensive to replace it than to just buy a gas stove,” Rhett said.

Link had heard that before. “That’s user error, not an inherent flaw in the material,” he pointed out. “Anyway, tell me about the witch.”

“She read my cards, which I always figured was confirmation bias and cold reading.” There was a glug and a swallow. “But I don’t know how she could figure out something that I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, that’s weird.”

Link heard a rustle and then the sound of a fridge opening as Rhett got himself another beer. “She asked me about the whole ‘feeling like someone’s watching me’ thing.”

“ _I always feel like, somebody’s watching meee_ ,” Link sang. He coughed. “Sorry. Go on.”

Rhett laughed, which made Link smile. “She said I should be on the lookout for a man with dark hair and glasses.”

Link flicked his eyes up, as if he could see his own hair. “That’s accurate.”

“Yeah, I know, I looked at your twitter,” Rhett said. “You post a lot of dumb cat pictures.”

“Checkers isn’t dumb!” Link protested. “He can’t help it if he looks like the Ace of Spades.” Checkers had a lopsided black triangle over his nose and a little black spot on his lower lip.

“Your cat’s not dumb. I mean, other than being a cat. Posting pictures of cats is dumb. Anyway,” Rhett cut off Link as he took in a deep breath to argue. “I asked her how I could get you to stop, and she said that she’d done all she could. I started getting mad but Stevie was like, ‘You know he’s probably watching you, so just tell him to call you’.”

“That’s pretty clever,” Link said.

“Yeah, Stevie’s really good at that sort of thing. So I made the sign and you know the rest.”

“I wanna talk to that witch!” Rhett’s story had Link all fired up. “How did she know?”

“I’ll see what I can find out about her,” Rhett said. “I wanna know, too.”

They were both silent for a little bit. Link went back to his Legos. He could hear Rhett getting up and presumably taking his empty bottle to the kitchen. “You’re being awfully nice to me tonight,” Link said as he heard Rhett settle back on his couch.

“Well, I told you I was gonna think, and I did,” Rhett replied. “I thought you were a creepy asshole at first, and to be clear, I still kind of do.”

“Fair,” Link said.

“But this game and these protocols… I don’t believe in magic, but this is some weird shit.”

Link swept another pile of Legos into his palm and dumped them in a container. “Yep.”

“I can see how you’d get all caught up in it,” Rhett said. “But man, doing that soulmate spell was a really stupid idea.”

Link pressed his lips together in irritation. “Yeah, I’ve figured that out by now.” He’d hoped the spell would bring him happiness. Instead, the last six months had been filled with an undefinable longing, hopeless hope, guilt, and disappointment. Now that he was in contact with his soulmate, he felt even worse. All that, and Rhett barely tolerated him.

“Do you think the activator would work for me if I haven’t finished the game?” Rhett asked.

“Uh.” Link paused in his sorting. “The point of the game seems to be to teach you how to work with diagrams, but the activator pretty much makes that useless. It was a pain in the ass to build, though.”

“Oh, I don’t want to build one,” Rhett said. “I was gonna ask if I could use yours.”

“Uh…”

“And where the hell did you get _whale oil_ , anyway?”

Link set down his brick separator. “I spent a week visiting every antique store in Nantucket and New Bedford. It cost $25.”

“That’s clever,” Rhett said. “I thought maybe you went to one of those places in Alaska where whaling is still legal.”

“I thought about it,” Link admitted. “But it seemed like it would be in poor taste, you know? Something about a white guy hanging around while Native people hunt for food… ugh.”

“They probably wouldn’t give you any, colonizer.” Rhett laughed. “So what do you say?”

“Oh. Um…” Link thought about his activator, wrapped in bubble wrap and carefully packed away in his storage closet, and how much time, effort, and money went into creating it. “I don’t… I mean…”

“It’s okay,” Rhett said. Link could tell he was disappointed. He didn’t want Rhett to feel that way.

“You can have some of my whale oil,” Link offered. “It only needs a couple drops.”

“Yeah?” There was a smile in Rhett’s voice.

“Yeah.” Link was smiling, too. That meant Rhett would have to meet him in the flesh, probably sooner rather than later.


	8. Chapter 8

Rhett backed out of the offer of whale oil pretty quickly. He claimed he wanted to keep working on the game, but Link was pretty sure Rhett just didn’t want to meet him. He had to admit he was apprehensive about meeting Rhett, too. There was no telling what would happen. He might not be able to keep his cool.

There was an interesting side effect to Rhett playing the game, though. Every few days, he’d text Link to complain or ask for advice, and as long as Link was in regular contact with Rhett, he had no desire to get out the activator. He thought about it, sure, but he didn’t feel compelled to the way he had before they started talking.

Link wasn’t sure what to make of it. Why did a text reading “if this puzzle says NO RESULT one more time i am going to smash my macbook” scratch the itch in his heart so much more than seeing Rhett through the spell window? Was it because it was an actual interaction, initiated by Rhett?

Whatever it was, a combination of sporadic texts and following Rhett on Twitter (where he posted a lot of snippets of strange things he found in his research) and Instagram (where he posted a lot of pictures of food, which Link sometimes liked, and occasional selfies, which Link was careful to _never_ like) completely satisfied whatever the soulmate spell had activated in Link. Even better was that Link didn’t feel guilty at all for following Rhett’s social media. He was a public-ish figure, after all.

In this way, three months passed. Rhett was working on his fourth Key. Link couldn’t help much, because the puzzles were different, but he was always happy to commiserate with Rhett. At first, they usually stuck to chatting about the game, but as time went on, they both began to go off-topic. Link sent Rhett pictures of Checkers and his in-progress Millenium Falcon, and Rhett sent Link pictures of every whale-themed item he came across, along with the diagrams he drew as he worked through The Keys to The Kingdom.

Link had begun socializing again once he completed the game, and he usually went to the bar with some coworkers after work on Fridays, but on this particular Friday, he had a cold and went home immediately after work so he could lie down. He got himself a couple of ibuprofen, made a big mug of tea with lemon and honey, and settled onto the couch for an evening of doing nothing. 

He was scrolling through Instagram with 18 pounds of Checkers on his chest like a very small, very dense weighted blanket. A muted episode of Project Runway played in the background. Other than his sinus headache, Link was very content.

His phone buzzed.

Rhett: [img]

Rhett: what fresh hell is this

Link opened the image. It was a picture of Rhett’s laptop with The Keys to The Kingdom pulled up on the screen. He knew those green letters well.

**PARTNER INPUT REQUIRED**

**> >>define partner**

**NO RESULT**

**PARTNER INPUT REQUIRED**

**> >>introduce partner**

**NO RESULT**

**PARTNER INPUT REQUIRED**

**> >>fuck you**

**NO RESULT**

**PARTNER INPUT REQUIRED**

**> >>**

Link laughed. He’d cursed out The Keys’ AI on more than one occasion, too.

Link: idk i never got that

Link: do you have a diagram?

Rhett: kind of

Rhett: [img]

It was a picture of Rhett’s iPad, which he used instead of pencil and paper like Link. Link studied the diagram. He estimated that it was maybe a 4 out of 10 in difficulty, and it was only half-finished. 

Rhett: what should i do?

Rhett: it won’t give me anything else until i get partner input

Rhett: whatever that is

The diagram seemed oddly familiar to Link. He enlarged it and looked at the details. There was a place where two curves intersected and then reflected back on themselves. He knew that shape.

Link: i’m the partner

Rhett: oh

Rhett: yeah i guess you would be

Link: hang on i gotta go get something

He tried to get up slowly and gently enough that he wouldn’t disturb Checkers, but the cat took offense at his comfortable spot moving and leapt to the floor. Link shook his head as he stood. “If you’d just let me pick you up, idiot…”

Link took the elevator down to the parking garage and unlocked his storage unit. His magic supplies were right where he left them, in a taped-up Amazon box of top of his artificial Christmas tree tote. He grabbed it and took it back up to his apartment.

His phone was buzzing on the coffee table. There were four increasingly agitated texts from Rhett, demanding to know what was going on.

Link: ok i got my journals

Link: your diagram reminded me of one i made a long time ago

Link: gotta find it though

Link used a ballpoint pen to cut through the packing tape and unpacked his supplies. First was the activator, which was wrapped in a layer of bubble wrap. Then came the whale oil, which was also wrapped in bubble wrap, along with two ziploc bags. There was another plastic pencil case, red this time, with all the spare activator odds and ends.

The journals were in the bottom. Link pulled them out. There were five of them, full size with black faux leather covers, held shut with elastic bands. Other pieces of paper were stuck between the pages--Link’s parchment tracings, extra large fold out diagrams, things he drew on scratch paper at work. It looked like the work of a madman, the sort of person who had a bulletin board full of newspaper clippings and photographs connected with red string.

What he was looking for was probably in the third notebook. Link unsnapped the elastic and leafed through the pages. There, about three-quarters of the way through, was what he was looking for: a parchment tracing based on a puzzle from the game. Link had drawn the game puzzle in blue, and then gone back and added his own pattern that echoed the original using a red pencil. It looked like one of those anaglyph 3D images that you had to wear special red and blue glasses to see.

Rhett’s half-finished diagram matched the original game puzzle. Link took a picture of his colored diagram and sent it to Rhett.

Link: [img]

Link: i came up with the red myself

Link: it wasn’t for the game

Link: just me fooling around

Link: i don’t how the game knows about it

Rhett: what the FUCK

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Link’s phone rang. He swiped to answer and put it up to his ear. “Hey.”

“Link, what the fuck _is_ this?” Rhett sounded seriously freaked out. Link didn’t blame him. He was pretty unsettled himself.

“I don’t know,” Link said simply. He held the phone away from his face and coughed. “Sorry.”

“You okay?”

“Just a cold.” Link settled back onto his pillow pile on the couch. As if by magic, Checkers appeared at the far end of the couch.

“Ah, that sucks, man.”

“Thanks.” Link grimaced in discomfort as Checkers stepped on his thigh. He leaned forward and grabbed the cat around his middle, pulling Checkers up to his stomach. “So are you gonna bail?”

“Uh.” Rhett sounded confused. Link pictured him on his couch, brows drawn together. “What?”

“Bail!” Link gesticulated with his free hand as Checkers kneaded biscuits into his stomach. “Uninstall the game, delete your diagrams. You’re probably not in too deep yet.”

Rhett sighed. “Yeah, maybe. What about you, though?”

Link frowned. “What _about_ me?”

“Don’t be obtuse.”

“The soulmate spell,” Link said. The elephant in the room.

“Yeah. You can’t undo it, right? You’ll end up like that poor woman in Vietnam.”

“Yeah, okay.” Link reached up and rubbed his face. His head still hurt. “So I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I think I’ve got it figured out.”

“How so?” Rhett asked.

“You know I haven’t spied on you since you asked me to stop, right?”

“Yeah, I would have felt it.”

“When this spell was created, there was no social media, so the only way you could see the other person was through the spell window,” Link said. “But now I have your Twitter and Instagram.”

“Okay…” Link could tell Rhett didn’t really get his point.

“So I don’t really need the activator, do I? You can stop playing the game, and stop talking to me, and I’ll just be like all the other strangers who follow you.” He tried to keep the hurt out of his voice, but apparently Rhett heard it anyway.

“I don’t want you to have to give up--”

“Give up _what_?” Link cut Rhett off. “Because I don’t know if you’ve looked at all those spells, but they’re all useless. All of them! The only thing I actually accomplished was spying on some poor unsuspecting guy who didn’t deserve it, which is pretty fucking pathetic.”

There was a long, long pause. Finally, Rhett said, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay, I’m gonna bail,” Rhett clarified.

“Oh.” Link let his breath out in a whoosh. “I’m sorry. I never should have....” He shook his head.

“If it’s any consolation, I’m not sure you had any choice,” Rhett said. He coughed, a fake, polite little cough. “Anyway. I gotta go.”

“Alright. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Link kept the phone up to his ear until it beeped. He dropped it on his chest and stared up at the ceiling. “Oh, Chex,” he said, scritching Checkers behind his ears. “What have I done?”


	9. Chapter 9

Link packed up his journals and activator the next morning so he could put them back into storage before his last conversation with Rhett wore off. He deleted Rhett’s number, too, and deleted all their texts. It was mostly a symbolic gesture, because he could message Rhett on Twitter or Instagram if he really wanted to, but it made Link feel like he had at least a _little_ control over his life.

Link’s cold gave him plenty of time to think about his last conversation with Rhett. He spent the rest of the weekend on the couch with a mug of tea and a box of tissues, much to the delight of Checkers. 

“What do you think he meant by ‘not really my choice’?” Link asked Checkers, who blinked up at him sleepily. “I mean, I read like thirty pages of warnings and decided to do it anyway, so…”

Checkers closed his eyes and laid his head down on Link’s chest. Link stroked him and sighed. “Or maybe he meant that I didn’t have a choice about doing the spell? I mean, it felt like I did, but who knows.”

That line of thinking only brought up more questions. Did Rhett have a choice?

And if he didn’t, what would the soulmate spell show him?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Twitter and Instagram weren’t really a substitute for the magic window or talking to Rhett, but they helped a lot. There was an empty place inside Link now, or maybe it had always been there and he was only able to recognize it now.

Link had never been lucky in love. He’d dated a number of people in college, but nothing serious. His longest, most successful relationship had lasted four years before dissolving into mutual disinterest.

He’d had better luck with friends, but he’d never been anyone’s best friend. Link was always just part of some larger friend group or another, and would occasionally hang out with one of the others one-on-one, but that was it. It had seemed like enough at the time.

His brief, shallow relationship with Rhett had changed that. Link felt like he understood Rhett in a way he’d never understood anyone else. There was always the possibility that he was biased since a spell had singled Rhett out as his soulmate, but Link really did think Rhett was special.

It hurt more than he would admit to anyone (except Checkers) that apparently Rhett didn’t feel the same way about Link.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Things slowly went back to normal for Link, or at least as normal as they could, given all that he’d learned over the past two and a half years. He still had secret knowledge that very few other people in the world had, and he still had The Keys to The Kingdom installed on his computer, but he didn’t do anything with either one. Other than checking Rhett’s socials in the morning, at lunch, when he got home, before bed, and maybe a few other times throughout the day, Link transitioned back to his former, mundane life.

He suspected that Rhett was not doing the same. A few weeks after they cut contact, Rhett posted a picture on Instagram looking down at his brown leather boots. He was standing on an intricately tiled floor, which to Link’s eye looked an awful lot like it might work well as a diagram. Over the next week, he posted two more pictures that gave Link the same feeling--a close-up of a crocheted blanket square, and a map of Middle Earth in the style of the London Tube map.

Link became absolutely certain Rhett hadn’t actually bailed a couple weeks after that, when he woke up at 3:27am after a very vivid Keys dream. He rubbed his face and stared up at the mottled blotches of streetlamp light on his ceiling. “Lying asshole,” Link muttered to himself. He didn’t really think Rhett was a liar, of course (Link wasn’t sure of Rhett’s asshole status, but he didn’t feel very charitable at half past three). It had been clear for a long time that free will was sent to the sidelines when The Keys to The Kingdom was involved.

After the third night in a row that Link had the same Keys dream, he stopped at a little stationery store on his way home from work where he’d purchased all his previous bullet journals. The most recent of his journals was actually only about a quarter full, but retrieving it from the box of magic supplies in his storage unit seemed like asking for trouble. Better to start fresh.

Link wandered around the store, the uneven wood floors squeaking under his chukkas. He picked up a journal, and then a set of erasable pens. Might as well get some new writing implements to go with the new journal. He also grabbed a set of blank cards and envelopes, even though he didn’t have any use for them.

He put the journal and one of the pens next to his bed, ready to record whatever was fresh in his mind when Link woke up at whatever godforsaken time the dream happened to hit him. The rest of the pens and the cards went in the junk drawer, ready in case he ever needed them.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

After a few nights of waking up and blearily squinting down at a journal in the harsh light of his bedside lamp, Link had half a diagram. It was messy and a little lopsided with lots of scribbled and partially-erased bits, but he could see where the other half would fit, like two hands clasped together.

Link cut a page out of the back of his journal and redrew the diagram neatly with a green pen. He went to the junk drawer and dug out the package of cards and envelopes. Subconsciously, he must have known that he’d need them.

He wrote PARTNER INPUT on the front of the card in big bold letters, folded up the diagram, and addressed it to Rhett at his YouTube channel’s fan mail PO Box.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Rhett didn’t respond, at least not directly. Link figured he must have received the diagram and put it to use, because he stopped having dreams. He also figured Rhett was still working on the game, based on the increasing number of different patterns he was posting on Instagram.

Link didn’t really know how to feel about that. Part of him was annoyed that Rhett had lied to him, but there was another part that just felt sorry for Rhett. _You poor bastard_ , it said. _It’s going to do to you what it did to me._

Of course, Link didn’t know that much about Rhett, just what he posted on social media and what he said in a few interviews. Rhett was currently single, but it seemed that in the past he’d been in a long relationship, so maybe he had more luck than Link. Maybe Rhett didn’t have an empty place inside of him, the way Link did.

But if that was true, why did the spell show him as Link’s soulmate? What _was_ a soulmate, anyway? None of the documentation that came with the spell defined it, and it didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the terminology. Protocols, activators, soulmates. One of these things was not like the others.

Link wished he had someone to talk to about this. He considered contacting Rhett, since he hadn’t really bailed, but that seemed like it might be stepping over a boundary.

“I wish I’d just laid awake in bed all night instead of getting on Reddit,” Link said to Checkers, who was curled up next to him on the couch. The cat looked up at him. “I wish I was just… regular lonely.”

Checkers laid his head back down and closed his eyes. Link sighed. He’d never felt more alone.


	10. Chapter 10

Link’s phone rang in the living room just as he was putting his quiche in the oven. When he was growing up, his grandmother made quiche as a special breakfast when he stayed at her house, but she called it “omelette pie”. He still thought of it that way.

“Perfect timing,” Link mumbled as he carefully slid the tray into the oven, trying not to slosh the egg mixture over the edge of the pie crust. Checkers sniffed around his feet, looking for any bits of ham or cheese Link might have dropped.

Quiche safely in the oven, Link went into the living room to grab his phone. There was one missed call and one text, both from the same number.

Unknown: give me a call when you get a chance

Link raised his eyebrows. First things first, though. He set a timer for his quiche before calling the unknown number. It rang three times before someone picked up.

“Hey,” Rhett said, because of course it was him.

“Hi,” Link said warily. He hoped Rhett wasn’t calling just because he needed help with The Keys to The Kingdom. “What’s up?”

Rhett sighed. “I need to apologize.”

Link furrowed his brow. “For what?” He sat on the couch and Checkers galloped in from the kitchen and launched himself onto the cushion next to Link.

“Bailing.”

“You didn’t bail,” Link said. He gave Checkers a few affectionate whacks on his flank. “I know you kept playing because I had those Keys dreams.”

“No, I mean, bailing on you,” Rhett said. “It was a real asshole move, and I shouldn’t have done it.”

Link dropped his head back onto the back of the couch and put his stocking feet on the coffee table. “You don’t have to go through with some kind of pity friendship ritual just because you need my partner input, Rhett.”

“Is that really how I come off?” Rhett asked. “Like, seriously.”

“Well, I don’t know!” Link retorted, cross. “We’re not friends and all of our interactions have to do with the game, so I really don’t know.”

Rhett sighed. “It’s not a pity friendship.”

“What?”

“It’s…” Link imagined Rhett waving his hand as he tried to figure out how to express himself. “I genuinely like talking to you, but I held back on it a lot because I didn’t like the idea of not having free will.”

“Okay, so?” Link asked, bewildered. “What changed?” Certainly nothing had changed on his end.

“I decided I don’t care if it’s fate or free will or whatever,” Rhett said. “I like talking to you and it’s stupid to reject a friendship on the really very small offchance we have a cosmic connection.”

“Oh.” Link was rather pleasantly surprised. 

“Yeah, and I want to figure out what this game is and where it came from,” Rhett said. “And I don’t think I can do that without you.”

“Um, wow. Okay.” Link blinked a couple times and sat up straight. “But how do you plan on doing that?”

Rhett snorted. “I do all the research for my channel, Link. You think I manage to find all those stories most people have never heard before through Google?”

Link shrugged. “I dunno, I never watch your channel. No offense, though! It’s just not my thing.”

“Is it Logan?” Rhett asked. “People either really like him or really don’t.”

“Who?”

“The presenter.”

“Oh, yeah.” Logan had a kind of ‘overly eager camp counselor telling scary stories at the bonfire’ vibe that Link didn’t care for. “Guess I’m in the ‘don’t’ category. Sorry.”

“It’s fine, you’re not really the target audience,” Rhett said, laughing. “Anyway, I’ve been doing a little research into early computer programming, which is not easy, because one, a lot of the primary sources aren’t available anymore, and two, it’s really, _really_ not my area of expertise.”

“Yeah, you’re a history guy, aren’t you?” Link said.

“Yep, I focused on cultural changes in Europe during and after World War One, so this is pretty far outside my wheelhouse.”

“What did you mean by the primary sources aren’t available?”

“Oh, this isn’t just an issue for me,” Rhett said, in the manner of someone about to go off into a well-loved, well-practiced rant. “So _my_ primary records are newspapers and letters and diaries and books, right? Paper. Paper lasts centuries, if you treat it right.”

Link fulfilled his role as ‘the guy who propels the rant forward’. “Uh huh.”

“But _computer_ sources? Like, when’s the last time you used a floppy disk?”

“Oh man.” Link really had to think about that. “Probably like fifteen or twenty years.”

“Okay, so imagine you had a floppy disk, and you knew there was something really important on it. How would you read it?” Rhett asked.

“Uh.” Link thought about that for a moment. “Is there such a thing as a USB floppy disk drive?”

“Oh.” Rhett sounded a little surprised. “Probably. I bet Amazon sells them. Okay, how about if you had a magnetic tape cartridge?”

Link had never even heard of that. “Is it like a music cassette?”

“Kind of. But you can probably find a cassette player pretty easily,” Rhett said.

“Yeah, I have one in my car. It’s a piece of shit. The car, not the cassette player,” Link clarified. “That’s one of the few things that actually works.”

“So out of all the programs written in, say, the early '70s when the activator was invented, only a small amount were ever saved onto physical media, and only a small amount of that physical media has survived into the present day. The likelihood of me, a paper research guy, coming across said surviving physical media, recognizing it for what it is, finding someone who has a machine that can read it and will be able to tell me what it is…” Rhett heaved a huge sigh. “ _Well_. You understand why this is so hard. The information just isn’t there.”

“So has your paper research turned up anything?” Link stroked Checkers, who had crawled into his lap at some point.

Rhett made a frustrated growl. Link raised his eyebrows in amusement. He understood how Rhett was feeling, but he sounded kind of feral. “ _One_ reference to ‘things we can’t understand’ from somebody at Bell Labs in the early '70s. No specific year, no specific person, and it might not even be related to the magic. It’s _infuriating_.”

“Do you think that the magic, or whatever it is, has always been there, but people just couldn’t access it until computers became a thing?” Link asked idly. “Or is it a side effect of computing?”

“I dunno. Do you think it matters?”

“Probably no--agh!” Link yelled in surprise as his timer went off. Forty-five minutes had passed incredibly quickly. He silenced the alarm and put the phone back up to his ear. “Hey, I gotta go. That’s for my quiche.”

“Oh.” Rhett sounded disappointed, which made Link perversely happy. “Okay.”

“Keep me updated on your research, okay? And let me know if you need any partner input.”

“I will.” Link could hear a smile in Rhett’s voice. “Enjoy your quiche.”

“Thanks, you too.” Link realized what he said and put a hand to his face in dismay. “Wait, no, I--”

Rhett laughed again. “It’s okay. Talk to you later.”

“Yeah. Bye.” When the call ended, Link pumped his fist, making Checkers leap out of his lap in alarm. “He likes me! He wants to be friends! He kinda figured something out! Yeah!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A woman in my sewing class has an embroidery machine that uses floppy disks, which is just as awkward and as inconvenient as you would think.


	11. Chapter 11

Rhett’s confession of friendship lifted a weight from Link that he didn’t know he was carrying. He’d been holding back, trying not to be a burden or a creep, never texting or calling Rhett first, keeping his tone neutral… Now, Link could joke around and start conversations about whatever he wanted and just be his _real_ self.

Like Rhett, he wondered if there was any free will involved, and, like Rhett, he decided he didn’t care. Making friends was hard, and Link would take any help he would get.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Rhett was currently working on his seventh Key, which didn’t require any partner input. Instead, the diagram was a mix between game input and dream input. Apparently this was the first time he’d had diagram dreams. The half diagram that Link had dreamed up and mailed off had been paired with a diagram Rhett based on one of his Instagram pictures, and he assumed that Link had seen it, too (which, of course, he had, but Link didn’t recognize it as his dream diagram until Rhett pointed it out.).

Rhett: if i didn’t already know this game was magic

Rhett: i’d probably think i was losing it

Link: i already had it figured out before the dreams started

Rhett: what, that you were losing it?

Link: very funny

Link: the way people's eyes just glazed over when i talked about it irl

Link: was the real clue

Rhett: and that doesn’t usually happen whenever you talk?

Link: fuck offffff

Rhett: lol

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Rhett was almost finished with the seventh Key. All he had left to do was a little bit of trial and error, which Link couldn’t help with as it was all based on the dream diagram. Instead, he provided moral support through a FaceTime call. Rhett had the phone propped up off to the side so Link could see the game pulled up on his laptop. Link wished Rhett would turn the phone around, but Rhett wanted him to catch any possible breakthroughs in the game. So far, there hadn’t been any.

**NO RESULT**

**INPUT REQUIRED**

**> >i hate you**

**NO RESULT**

**INPUT REQUIRED**

“I still can’t believe you beat this by yourself,” Rhett said offscreen. Link watched him rest his hands over the keyboard and run his fingers across the keys thoughtfully. “Nobody to help you. Nobody to _talk_ to.”

Link shrugged. “I’m an only child and I grew up with a single mom who worked a lot. I’m used to doing things alone.”

“That’s kinda sad.” Rhett typed another answer into the computer and groaned when it was rejected. 

“What about you?” Link asked.

“I have an older brother. Perfect nuclear family, from the outside. Mom, dad, two kids,” Rhett said. “But my parents were really strict and conservative, my dad especially. My mom just stood by, because the man is the head of the family and all that traditional gender role crap. It’s better now, but growing up… man.”

Link considered that. “I think I’d rather have my upbringing, on the whole.”

“Ehhh… Hah!” The Keys to The Kingdom accepted Rhett’s input. He grabbed his phone and turned it around. Link grinned at Rhett’s excited face and gave him a round of applause.

“Nice!” Link exclaimed. “Just one more.”

“Yep. I’m gonna take a quick break.” Rhett propped the phone back on the table and stood up and stretched. Link’s point of view gave him a perfect glimpse of the sliver of stomach that was revealed as Rhett arched his back. He raised his eyebrows.

“Huh,” Link whispered to himself. The feeling in his chest was… new and different.

He idly stroked Checkers and waited for Rhett to come back as he thought about what he’d just felt. The documentation that came with the soulmate spell made it clear that soulmates could be romantic or platonic, and when the spell showed him another man, Link figured this would be a platonic connection. After all, he’d never had a romantic relationship with a man.

But, it seemed, he was attracted to Rhett.

“Hey!” Rhett appeared back on the screen, interrupting Link’s thoughts. “You ready to finish this thing off?”

Link shook his head a little to clear it. “Uh, yeah. Let’s do this.” He tried to focus back on the game, but it was difficult.

He had a lot to think about.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Rhett’s eighth Key didn’t require any input from Link, at least not explicitly. The game didn’t request any partner input, but the two men texted constantly and called every few days. They didn’t always discuss the game, but Rhett’s entire experience with The Keys to The Kingdom was influenced by Link.

“This is about the point where the puzzle started changing for me,” Link said. It was a Tuesday night and he had a new Lego set (actually 3 sets, little spacecraft from the late '80s that came as a bundle from eBay) to build while Rhett worked on his original diagram. Checkers had stopped yelling from the bedroom about ten minutes earlier. Link had been spending an increasing number of nights on video calls with Rhett, and he really enjoyed it.

“Did you freak out?” Rhett asked. He was making his diagram on his iPad with some drawing app that created mandala-like radial patterns from Rhett’s doodles. It was a completely different technique than the ones Link had used to create his own diagrams, and it was kind of fascinating.

“Yeah, but I was really tired, so it was pretty muted.” Link carefully fit two components together. “Then I walked around in a daze for the next week.”

Rhett laughed. “That’s how I was after you called me.”

“Whatever happened to that witch, anyway? You said you were going to talk to her.”

“Stevie gave me her email but she never responded. I guess she’s been backpacking across Asia for like six months, but I’m pretty sure they have wifi in Asia these days.” Rhett frowned at his diagram, erased a bit, and redrew it. His eyes grew big. “Whoa!”

Link looked up from his spacecraft. “Did it work?”

“Yeah!” Rhett repositioned his phone so Link could see his laptop screen. As Link watched, **EVEN** changed to **EVER** and back again. He turned the phone back to himself and Link laughed at his open-mouthed astonishment.

“You’re a shitty wizard, Rhett!” Link exclaimed. “How does it feel?”

Rhett ran his hands through his hair and blew out a long breath. “Wild, man. I mean, you told me about it and I knew it would happen, but… man.”

Link tapped a Lego against his chin thoughtfully. “Yeah, I guess you haven’t actually seen any magic yet.”

“I don’t know if I’d want to see you do that spell, though. Might be weird.” Rhett’s iPad lay off to the side, forgotten for now.

“I could show you the chestnut spell, I guess,” Link said. He was pretty sure he still had the chestnut board somewhere.

“Really?” The eagerness in Rhett’s voice and on his face made something flutter in Link’s chest.

“Yeah, just let me know when you’re free,” Link said. He hoped he didn’t sound quite as excited and nervous as he felt. It was one thing to be openly friendly with Rhett, but he didn’t want to come off like a besotted teenager. Talk about awkward. “It’ll be fun.”

“Awesome. I’m so excited to be a shitty wizard, Link. I can’t even tell you.” Rhett picked up his iPad again.

Link laughed. “Even though magic is stupid and useless?”

“Yeah, ‘cause it’s still _magic_!”

Link just shook his head and went back to his Legos, a little smile on his face.


	12. Chapter 12

Link hummed to himself as he gathered his things and stuck them in his bag.

“You’re in a good mood,” his officemate Leslie observed as she zipped up her own bag.

“I’m meeting a friend tonight,” Link said before adding, for some reason, “An internet friend.”

“Oh, like from Tinder?” Leslie said in interest.

“No!” Link had tried Tinder and quickly decided it wasn’t for him. “Just, a regular friend.” That was a bit of a lie, but she didn’t need to know that.

Leslie slung her bag over her shoulder. “You gotta be careful with those internet friends, Link. He could be a forty-year-old man.”

Link snorted. “I should hope so. _I’m_ a forty-year- old man! Anyway, it’s not like this is the '’90s anymore. I’ve FaceTimed with him and seen his socials. He is who he says he is.”

“Well, be safe and have fun.” Leslie flipped off the lights as they exited the office. “Tell me all about it on Monday.”

“I will.” It still fascinated Link how direct mentions of the game and magic slid off people like oil off teflon. He could tell Leslie every single detail of performing the chestnut spell for Rhett and she’d just nod her head and say _that’s cool_ or _neat_ and have completely forgot about it two seconds later. “Seeya Monday.”

“Bye, Link.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Link’s confident attitude evaporated once he got into his car. He kept up a nonstop nervous mumble to himself until he merged onto the highway, where it changed to a wordless, “Aaaaaahhhh…”

Blowing off steam helped, and by the time he got home, Link was more or less calm again. He unlocked the door. There was a _thunk_ from the other room and Checkers came trotting up to greet him with a little trill, like he did every day. Link leaned over and picked the cat up with a little grunt. “You are a big boy, Checkers!”

He turned around and shut the door before carrying Checkers into the bedroom. Link dropped him on the foot of the bed, where there was still a warm hollow where Checkers had been sleeping before Link got home.

“We’ve got company tonight, so I want you to be on your best behavior,” Link warned Checkers as he took off his work clothes. “None of that ‘puke in the middle of the living room carpet in front of everybody’ crap, understand?” He threw his clothes in the laundry basket and stood in front of the open closet.

This was usually about the time Link changed into a well-loved t-shirt and a pair of joggers, but there was no way he’d meet Rhett dressed like that. Pants were easy enough--he had a pair of gray jeans that he knew looked good. Link tried on a few different shirts and ended up with a black shirt covered in a lush green foliage print.

Rhett wasn’t going to show up for another hour and a half, which left plenty of time for Link to set up the chestnut spell. There was only one problem: that required Link to go down to his storage unit and get his journals, and they were in the same box as his activator.

There wasn’t really any reason that should make Link so nervous. In the eight months since Rhett told Link to quit spying on him, Link hadn’t used the activator once. He _wanted_ to, especially after Rhett bailed on him and they didn’t speak for nearly a month, but he didn’t. Link hadn’t even gone down to the storage unit. Whatever had driven the woman in the soulmate spell documentation to divorce her husband, abandon her family, and move halfway across the world didn’t have the same hold on Link. Maybe it was as simple as Link knowing Rhett’s name.

Even so, he put the bubble wrapped activator at the far end of the table as he unpacked his journals, and put it back into the box as soon as he could.

The diagram for the chestnut spell depended on who was casting it and what the date was. Link had already figured out all the parts that were personalized for him, so it only took a little over an hour to redraw the diagram with the updated information.

That left Link just enough time to eat a peanut butter sandwich he didn’t really want, set up the wood samples and paper slips on the table, and sit on the couch petting Checkers (to prevent him from jumping onto the table and messing everything up) while scrolling nervously through Instagram.

Even though he was expecting it, the knock on the door almost made him jump out of his skin.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Link unlocked the door and pulled it open, his skin abuzz with nerves. His eyebrows shot up. He knew Rhett had to be taller than he was, but his eyes were level with Rhett’s shoulders. Link looked up and met Rhett’s eyes.

“Uh, hey,” he said.

It was a very good thing that Link had had about a week and a half to think about the fact that he was attracted to Rhett, because if not, he might have fallen over. Even so, it washed over him like a flash flood. Rhett had intense green eyes under dark brows, a neatly trimmed beard, and dark blond curls pushed back from his face. His eyes were partially hidden behind the apples of his cheeks, because he was smiling down at Link, who grinned back.

Link felt his brain seize up in a way it hadn’t since he was in middle school. He stood, rooted to the spot, with one hand gripping the edge of the door. Rhett was real, Rhett was here, Rhett was attractive, Rhett was...nervous? His hands were shaking just the tiniest bit and there was a little tension in his brow. 

Good, at least that meant Link wasn’t the only one.

“Hi,” Rhett said. “Can I come in?” 

“Oh, god, sorry.” Link pulled the door open. Checkers was nowhere to be seen. He was probably under Link’s bed. It took him a while to warm up to visitors. “Please, come in.”

After Link closed the door, the two men stood an arm's-length apart and looked each other up and down. Link was a little disappointed that Rhett wasn’t in his sexy lumberjack garb, but his short sleeve button down covered in birds and checkered Vans were a pretty good substitute. Link hoped he looked half as good.

Rhett gave him one final once-over before reaching out and poking Link in the shoulder.

“What was that for?” Link asked, rubbing the offended spot.

“I had to make sure you were real, man!” Rhett said. “After all this time…”

“Well, in that case…” Link reached up and poked Rhett in the shoulder. He was real, alright. They stared at each other again before simultaneously bursting into slightly hysterical giggles.

“Oh man,” Link said once he caught his breath. “This is just so _weird_.”

“I know.” Rhett ran his hands through his hair. “But not in a bad way.”

“No, not in a bad way,” Link agreed. He gestured Rhett to come into the apartment properly before pausing. “Hey, can you take off your shoes?”

“Sure.” Rhett toed off his sneakers with a bemused look, his attention elsewhere. He pointed at the table. “Is that the chestnut spell?”

“Yeah.” Link led him over to it. “So here’s the coins. I had to get a whole bunch of coin rolls at the bank and search through them to get the right years. It was a huge pain in the ass.”

“Uh huh,” Rhett said, fascinated.

“And this is the chestnut. I had to get it from eBay because American chestnuts are almost extinct. And _these_ are some sticks I picked up outside, and the paper is a torn-up coffee filter,” Link concluded. “Do you want anything to drink?” It was important to be a good host, even if you were a shitty wizard.

Rhett shook his head. “No, I wanna see some magic. I’ve been waiting for ages.”

“Okay!” Link plopped down into a chair. Rhett leaned over his shoulder, which was very distracting in several ways. Link could smell something a little bit sweet and cedary that was a little strange and a lot interesting. He slid his journal over so Rhett could see the diagram and tried to concentrate. “So this is 99 percent done. This stuff all references my personal characteristics, this part is the date… I mean, you know how this stuff works by now.”

“Yeah.”

“And when I link these two points,” Link said, tapping them with his pen, “the paper on that board should turn yellow.” He turned around and smiled at Rhett. “You ready?”

“Absolutely,” Rhett said eagerly.

Link turned back to his diagram and finished it. The torn bit of coffee filter on the chestnut board went from white to cream to lemon before finishing as a deep goldenrod color. Link laughed in delight. The spell was far more trouble than it was worth, but it was so satisfying to have it actually work.

“Holy _shit_.” Rhett reached to grab the yellow paper. His arm brushed Link’s shoulder, which excited Link far more than it should have. He was glad he had his back to Rhett so the other man couldn’t see his blush. “Does it fade?”

“Yeah, after a couple hours.”

“Can you do it again?”

“Probably.” Link erased the final line in his diagram (the erasable pens had been an excellent impulse purchase) and took a slip of filter from one of the sticks and put it on the chestnut board. He re-completed the diagram and the new piece of paper turned yellow.

“Wow.” Rhett picked up the second slip. Link turned around to look at him and was a little alarmed at what he saw.

“You’re really pale, man. You should probably go sit down.”

“Okay.” Rhett drifted over to the couch and collapsed down on it. He stared down at the little yellow slips of paper in his hand.

“Um, I’m gonna get you some water.” Along with a drink, Link thought Rhett might like a little privacy to deal with his rocked world. He went into the kitchen, leaving Rhett alone with whatever he was thinking about.

If, that was, he was capable of coherent thought.


	13. Chapter 13

Link paused in the doorway to the kitchen, a clinking glass of ice water in each hand. There was an intriguing scene unfolding before him.

Rhett sat on the couch, staring down, but instead of staring at the yellow slips of paper, he was now looking at Checkers. The cat sat on the carpet in front of him, tail twitching. He gathered himself and leapt lightly into Rhett’s lap. Rhett froze.

Link watched in fascination as Checkers sniffed Rhett’s shirt and Rhett cringed back in apparent fear. Link walked in and set the glasses on the table. “You okay? You want me to take him?”

Rhett glanced over at him, a stricken look on his face. “What does he _want_?”

Checkers was bonking his head against Rhett’s chest. “He wants you to pet him,” Link said, trying not to giggle. “He won’t bite you or anything. Checkers is a people cat.” Once he got over his initial fear of visitors, Checkers usually insisted on being part of any gathering. He had a severe case of FOMO.

“Sure, you say that _now_ ,” Rhett muttered, but he lifted a trembling hand anyway and gave Checkers a few tentative strokes on his side. That wasn’t enough for the cat, who tried to stick his head under Rhett’s hand. “What’s he doing?”

“Here, scratch his ears, like this.” Link demonstrated. Rhett gave it a try, but his technique wasn’t quite right. Checkers started settling down in Rhett’s lap anyway, but Link decided that would be too much too fast, so he scooped Checkers up and put the cat in his own lap. “C’mere, Chex.”

To his surprise, Rhett reached over and pet Checkers’s head with one tentative finger. “Is he always this calm?”

“Usually. He gets the crazies sometimes and gallops up and down the hall,” Link said. He gave Checkers a few affectionate whacks. “You must be a dog person.”

Rhett smiled. “Yeah. When I was six, there was a stray cat in the backyard and when I tried to pet it, it bit the crap out of my hand and ran off. I had to get stitches and rabies shots since no one could find it.”

“Jesus, I can see why you’re nervous around cats,” Link said. “I promise Checkers has all his shots, though. I’ll put him in the bedroom if you want, too.”

Rhett shook his head. “You don’t have to. He seems okay, for a cat.” He picked up his ice water and took a long drink. Link was pleased to see his color had improved a lot. He picked up his own glass and took a sip.

“How are you feeling?” Link asked after a couple minutes.

“Oof.” Rhett rolled the glass between his palms. “Amazed. Kind of overwhelmed. Kind of scared.”

“Because shit’s getting real? Or because of Checkers?”

Rhett laughed. “A little of both, I guess. Mostly shit getting real, though.” He put the glass of melting ice cubes back onto the coffee table. “Can I look at your spell books?”

“Sure. They’re not spell books, though.” Link got up and deposited Checkers onto the couch. “Well, I guess the binder is. I printed out all the PDFs. The rest are just journals.” He picked up the sticks as Rhett sat and started leafing through the most recent journal. There wasn’t much in it, just the dream diagram and the chestnut diagram. Rhett closed it and picked up the next one.

“Link! You know what these are?” Rhett sounded excited. He picked up the book and held it up. “This is _physical media_ about the game! About magic! I’ve been looking in the wrong places.”

“Oh?” Link sat across from him, perfectly happy to play the audience to another of Rhett’s monologues on research. Rhett’s eyes got big and he waved his hands around passionately. It was even better in person than it was over video call.

It was usually pretty interesting, too.

“Yeah, so I’ve been looking in technical journals, industry publications, that sort of thing. Surviving physical media. But they’re not going to publish anything about magic in those!” Rhett brandished the journal. “I need personal narratives! I wonder if Bell Labs has an archive of stuff like that? I gotta make a note.” He dropped the book and pulled out his phone.

Link propped his chin on his hand and smiled at Rhett fondly. He didn’t know what a soulmate was, didn’t know if he even _believed_ in soulmates, but he and Rhett had some kind of connection. Rhett might not feel it as strongly as Link did, but it was undeniably there.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Rhett wanted to smell the whale oil (opening it caused Checkers to jump up on the table, chirping with interest). Rhett wanted to unwrap the activator and check it out. Rhett wanted to flip the switch on the activator (which predictably did nothing). Rhett wanted to open the pencil box and look at all the components inside.

Rhett was kind of exhausting.

“Don’t take any of it out, okay?” Link said as he carefully peeled off the strips of blue painter’s tape that sealed the activator. It was the first time he’d touched it since the first night he’d spoken with Rhett. Even though he hadn’t felt the need to use it once they started talking regularly, he was still wary of it.

Rhett gave him a look like, _what sort of person do you think I am?_. “It really does just look like a bunch of junk, doesn’t it?” he said, holding the plastic box up to get a closer look.

“Yeah.” Link stifled a yawn. It was getting late. “Hey, I just had a thought.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I think it’s funny that a physical media guy like you has all his diagrams and notes saved as digital media.” Link smiled as Rhett’s eyebrows shot up.

“Oh shit, you’re right. I gotta print those out.” Rhett put the activator down gently and pulled out his phone to make another note.

Link yawned again. “Sorry,” he said from behind his hand. 

Rhett checked the time. “I better go and let you get to bed.” He stuck the phone back in his pocket. “Hey, can I ask you a favor?”

“Uh, I guess?”

“Can I borrow your journals? Just for a little while. I want to look at them closer, to see what your experience with the game was like as you lived it…” Rhett looked at him hopefully.

Link sucked in a thoughtful breath and considered it. He’d put so much of himself into those journals. So much time and effort and bitter failure and jubilant success. His first reaction was a knee jerk _NO!_ , and maybe it would have stayed that way for anyone else, but this was Rhett. Rhett the researcher, Rhett his game partner, Rhett his soulmate. If anyone would understand what was in those books, it would be Rhett.

“Yeah. For a little while,” Link said finally. “I’m keeping this one, though, in case I need it.” He pulled the most recent journal out of the stack.

“Thanks, Link. I know it was a lot to ask.” Rhett stood and gathered up the rest of the journals. The two men walked to the door. Rhett nervously shifted the pile of books from one arm to the other. “Um, same time next week?”

“Sounds good to me.” Link felt like maybe, just maybe, the empty place inside of him was being filled. He stood awkwardly in front of the door. Just waving goodbye seemed lame, but a hug seemed like too much too soon. “Uh.”

Rhett solved the problem by reaching out and clapping Link on the shoulder. “Thanks again. I promise I’ll take good care of your journals.”

“I know you will.” Link unlocked the door and opened it. “Drive safe, okay?”

“I will. See you next time.”

“Bye.” Link gave Rhett a little wave as he walked out into the hall. Once he had the door locked again, he turned around and collapsed back against it. “ _Wow_ ,” he said to Checkers, who was sitting on the table washing his face. “Wow wow wow.”

Checkers ignored him.

“Jerk.” Link went to bed, hoping he’d dream about Rhett.


	14. Chapter 14

Rhett spent the next week going through Link’s journals and sporadically texting him about them. Apparently, they were “fascinating” and would be “incredibly valuable to any future researchers”. Link had to roll his eyes at that. He didn’t think it was anything valuable, but even if it was, how would anyone possibly find it? It wasn’t like he was a scientist working at Bell Labs, which had an archive that would gratefully accept his personal papers upon his death. 

Because Bell Labs _did_ have an archive, and while it was mostly filled with technical materials, there was a section of what Rhett called “personal narratives” and what Link called “diaries.” It turned out that the woman who ran the archive was a fan of Rhett’s YouTube channel, so it was easy for him to set up a visit to Murray Hill, New Jersey. He’d leave in a month and stay for five days.

Link’s phone dinged. He picked it up off the coffee table. Another text from Rhett, probably asking him to clarify some illegible scribble.

Rhett: [img]

Rhett: who might this be about, hm?

Just as Link thought, it was a picture of something he’d written in one of his journals. 

_Blond hair (lt brown?) kinda curly_

_Short beard_

_3 different kinds of beans--why?_

_Green hoodie_

_Wears shoes in the house (ugh)_

_Nice kitchen_

_Probably not THAT far away if he’s making dinner right now_

Link’s stomach dropped. He’d completely forgotten that the last journal had his Rhett notes in it.

Link: omg i am SO sorry

Link: that was the first time i saw you

Link: i wanted to figure out who you were

Rhett: relax

Link: i wasn’t trying to be a creep i swear!

Rhett: i’m not mad

Link: oh

Link: you were before though

Rhett: i was more upset than angry i think

Link: that’s pretty much the same

Rhett: not really

Rhett: plus i was pretty relieved to find out it wasn’t all in my head

Link: yeah i bet

Rhett: anyway i think the list is funny

Link thanked his lucky stars that he hadn’t started crushing on Rhett until months later. If Rhett read something like _nice stomach, great laugh, smart, funny, pretty eyes_ , Link thought he might just keel over and die.

Link: i guess it’s not that bad

Link: but i still feel like a jerk for spying on you for so long

Rhett: don't 

Rhett: i would have done the exact same thing

That brought up a subject that Link had tried to avoid thinking about: what would happen if (or, more likely, _when_ ) Rhett tried the soulmate spell? There was an unspoken assumption that he’d see Link, but what if he didn’t? Could soulmates be one way? If they were, what was Link going to do? If they weren’t, what was Link going to do?

More importantly, what was _Rhett_ going to do?

Link knew he was starting to fall for Rhett, and he honestly thought it would have happened anyway, even without the soulmate spell. For a long time, he thought the spell had a part in creating his feelings, but since meeting Rhett for real, Link had changed his mind. Instead, he was beginning to come around to the theory that the spell just showed a connection between two compatible people.

At some point, they’d have to talk about what it meant to be soulmates, but now was not the time.

Link: you must be pretty close to the end

Rhett: yep

Rhett: i’ll bring them back friday

Rhett: and i printed out all of mine so you can see them

Link: sounds good

Link: can’t wait

He grimaced as he waited for a response. Was that too eager? Their friendship was still so new…

Rhett: me neither

Rhett: see you then

Rhett: :)

Link smiled and relaxed. Rhett liked him. They were friends. It was okay.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Rhett’s second visit was much less nerve-wracking for Link. They talked about the journals and the game a little at first, but then Rhett said that he was sick of talking about it.

“Really?” Link said in surprise. He’d figured out that Rhett was the kind of person who liked to take a _really_ deep dive into a subject and track down every last little detail. In fact, Rhett often had to pass ideas on to his YouTube research team because he knew if he looked into them himself, he’d get sucked down a rabbit hole.

“Yeah,” Rhett said. “We aren’t going to learn anything from just talking about it to each other, you know? We have to wait until I go to New Jersey or win the game to see if there’s any new information.”

“New information if you win the game?”

“Yeah, if it gives me different spells than it gave you.”

“Ohhh…” That had never even occurred to Link. It made sense, though. After the first puzzle, all the puzzles in Rhett’s version of The Keys to The Kingdom had been different. “But then what if--”

He was interrupted by Rhett standing up abruptly as Checkers walked up. “Oh, no no no,” Rhett said. “You’re a nice cat, but I don’t want you in my lap.”

“Chex.” Link wiggled his fingers and snapped to get the cat’s attention, but Checkers ignored him and sniffed at Rhett’s ankles instead. “Sorry.” Link hauled Checkers into his own lap. “Anyway, I was saying that if you get different spells once you win the game--”

“Link!” Rhett sat back down, laughing. “That’s talking about the game.”

“Um, we hadn’t actually stopped yet? And anyway, you’re the one who brought up a new and interesting idea.” Link tried to keep Checkers in his lap, but the cat _really_ wanted to get close to Rhett. “Checkers, _stop_.”

“Why is he so into me?” Rhett scooted further away. 

“Cats like people who aren’t paying attention to them, so may-- _Checkers_!” The cat slithered out of Link’s arms and climbed into Rhett’s lap. Rhett froze. “Checkers, no!” Link got his arms around Checkers’s middle and bodily hauled the cat off to the bedroom. It was a struggle, because Checkers was 18 pounds of annoyed cat, but Link managed to dump him on the bed and close the door before he could escape. Link walked back to find Rhett with a somewhat alarmed expression on his face.

“Um, is he okay?” Rhett asked as Checkers began yelling through the bedroom door.

“He’s fine. He’s just having a tantrum.” Link threw himself back onto the sofa and folded a leg up under him. “Anyway, what are we gonna talk about if we don’t talk about the game? It’s really the only thing we have in common.”

“That’s not true,” Rhett protested.

“Rhett, literally every single conversation we’ve ever had has involved the game or magic in some way. Or like, at least 99 percent of them, anyway.” Link raised his eyebrows in a challenge.

“There’s other things,” Rhett said. “There’s gotta be, otherwise why would…?” He gestured back and forth between them.

“Why would _what_?” Link asked. He knew what Rhett meant, but he wanted to hear how Rhett would phrase it.

“Why would we be paired together like this! If there’s nothing in common, why _us_?” Rhett threw up his hands in agitation.

Link chewed his lip nervously. “You really think there’s…”

“There’s _what_?”

“A connection?” There was--Link knew there was--he could feel it and he was sure Rhett did too, but Rhett had never said so explicitly. 

“Well, _yeah_.” Rhett made it sound like the most obvious thing in the world. “I mean, I don’t believe in soulmates, and even if I did, I don’t know if this is… that. But I like you and I’ve never felt comfortable with anyone so fast, and even if I gave up magic and The Keys and drowned my books tomorrow, I’d still want you around.”

A relieved little smile crossed Link’s face. That was maybe the best thing he’d ever heard, but he still had one last question. “Drown your books?”

“Like in The Tempest.” Rhett said. Link looked at him blankly. “Shakespeare? No? Oh, well, there’s this guy, Prospero, and he’s a wizard and at the end he gives up magic and he throws his spellbook into the sea.” 

“Oh.” Link folded his arms and smirked at Rhett. “You’re still talking about magic.”

Rhett rolled his eyes. “We need to go do something that doesn’t have anything to do with games or magic or being a shitty wizard.”

“Like what?”

“Uh, is there a bowling alley around here? We can share a pitcher of cheap beer and talk shit on each other. Or maybe you’re really good at bowling and you’ll crush me. I dunno.” Rhett shrugged.

Link laughed. “No, I’m terrible. That sounds fun, though.”

“Then let’s go.” Rhett stood up and went to put on his shoes. Link followed after letting Checkers out of the bedroom. The cat made a beeline for Rhett and rubbed against his leg. “Cat, we are never going to be friends. Go away.”

But as Link watched with a little grin, Rhett leaned over and gave Checkers a pat.


	15. Chapter 15

Link had missed the last two rounds of Friday after-work drinks with his coworkers, and now he was missing a third.

“I heard you’re not coming tonight,” Leslie said.

“You heard true,” Link replied. He scowled at the equations on his monitor.

“But it’s '80s movie trivia!”

Link leaned over and peered around his screen so he could see Leslie. “I’m terrible at trivia.”

“I know! That’s why I want you to come, so I can kick your ass.” She grinned at him. “So what are your other plans, huh?”

“Oh, uh, my friend Rhett and I are gonna hang out.” Link retreated behind his monitor so Leslie couldn’t see his cheeks turning pink. “Nothing special, really.”

Leslie wolf whistled. “Wow, you’re getting real serious real fast!”

Link stuck his face, entirely red now, out from behind his screen. “Please don’t.” He was having enough trouble figuring his relationship out on his own, and he _really_ didn’t need outside help.

“Oh!” Leslie’s entire demeanor changed and she put her hands over her mouth. “I’m so sorry. I was just teasing. I didn’t realize it was, uh…” She fluttered her fingers around vaguely.

“I don’t know if it’s--” here Link repeated her gesture “--either. I’m trying to figure it out.” He sighed. “Relationships are hard.”

“I’ll drink to that,” said Leslie, who was on her third husband. “But just remember that you’re a great guy and anyone would be lucky to have you, so don’t take any shit.”

Link smiled and retreated back behind his monitor. _Don’t take any shit_ was classic Leslie advice, along with _Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke_ and _Never trust anyone who wears a hat while driving_. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“I’ll be in New Jersey next week,” Rhett said.

“Are you excited?” Link asked. They were wandering around his neighborhood with drinks from a nearby cafe. Link had an orange/banana/apple/celery/wheatgrass juice, and Rhett had an iced lavender tea latte. He offered Link a sip, and Link hated it. It was like drinking potpourri.

“Well, I’ve never had any particular urge to go to New Jersey before, but yeah, I’m a little excited. Even if I don’t find anything about magic, I’ll probably find some good stories for the show.” Rhett turned to Link and waggled his eyebrows. “‘Cause this is a business trip.”

“Yes, of course.” Link took a sip of his juice. “Are you gonna work on the game while you’re there?”

“If I can,” Rhett said. “I’m pretty sure it’s gonna require partner input.” He was finally on the tenth Key.

“Well, you know how to get in touch.” Link carefully stepped over a puddle. Rhett splashed through in his waxed leather boots.

They walked along in silence for a while, each lost in their own thoughts. Link was preoccupied with how much he was going to miss Rhett. This was only the third time they’d hung out in person, so Rhett being in New Jersey wouldn’t be that different than Rhett at his home--they’d still have to rely on texts and video calls. The only thing that would be significantly different would be the time change, but to Link it seemed like Rhett would be as far away as if he were on the moon.

He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn’t hear Rhett talking to him at first. “Sorry, what?”

“I said, when I make my activator, I’m going to do the ice spell.” Rhett slurped up the last of his weird floral drink.

“The one that makes it smell like marigolds?”

“Chrysanthemums.”

“Whatever.”

Rhett rolled his eyes. “I have my great-grandfather’s pocket watch, so the rest of it should be pretty easy.”

“Then you’ll be a _real_ shitty wizard!” Link said in delight. “Just like me.”

“We should get pointy hats and wooden staffs,” Rhett said. “Maybe cloaks, too.”

Link looked up at Rhett and laughed. “ _You_ in a tall pointy hat? You wouldn’t fit through a doorway!”

“I’d enchant my hat to be insubstantial, so it would pass through any obstacles.” Rhett smiled, pleased with his solution.

“Oh, obstacles like your head?” Link shot back.

“Shut uuuppp,” Rhett whined. “You make magic sound so stupid and boring and lame.”

“It _is_ stupid and boring and lame!”

“No, _you’re_ stupid and boring and lame.”

They looked at each other, burst into laughter, and continued on, squabbling affectionately.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Rhett: it’s just frustrating

Rhett: there’s so much information that i don’t understand

Rhett: even in the diaries

Link: these are the employee diaries right?

Rhett: yeah

Rhett: i did find a guy who wrote about different pranks he pulled

Rhett: so maybe that’ll be an episode if his family okays it

Link: that’s cool

Rhett: and then a different guy who kept track of every time he cheated on his wife

Link: um

Link: who donates these things?

Rhett: the estate i guess

Rhett: apparently he was a pretty high ranking guy in the company

Rhett: plenty of travel

Link: what an asshole

Link: maybe try someone who wasn’t an exec

Link: bc i bet he didn’t do much coding

Link: you want a worker bee

Rhett: huh

Rhett: that’s a really good idea

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Rhett: holy shit link look at this

Rhett: [img]

Link: i can’t really make it out

Link: something about knitting?

His phone rang. Link answered. “Hey!”

It was Rhett, talking very, very quickly. “Okay, so this woman, her name was Marguerite Hanlon, she was working late one night and she was knitting an Irish wedding shawl for her daughter--”

“A what?”

“Yeah, I had to look it up, too. It’s a really fancy lace shawl that’s supposed to be so thin and fine that you can pull it through a wedding ring. Anyway, the pattern was really complicated so she had it drawn out on graph paper. You see where this is going, right?”

“Yeah.” Link shivered. He had goosebumps all over his forearms. “She changed it, right? And the program changed?”

“Yeah.” There was wonder in Rhett’s voice. “And when she tried to show it to coworkers, the machine crashed.”

“Wow.” Link shook his head, trying to clear it. “When was this?”

“February 1970. I wonder if she was one of the people who figured out the activator.”

“Is she still alive?” Link asked.

“No, she died of lung cancer in the early '90s,” Rhett said. “I tried to find her daughter to see if she still had the shawl, but no luck.”

“But you found proof! Someone who isn’t us found the magic, and yeah, it was probably even more useless for her, but it was there!” Link was so excited he was jumping around his apartment, waving his free arm. Checkers watched in mild alarm from under the coffee table. “Maybe she was even the _first_ person!”

“Maybe!” Rhett laughed, sounding just as delighted as Link felt. “I haven’t finished it, but I’ll make copies and email them to you.”

“Okay!” Link said. “Rhett, this is _amazing_.”

“I know.” Link could hear the smile in his voice. “I gotta go, though.”

“Alright, I’ll talk to you later.” Link put his phone down on the table and picked up Checkers and held him like a baby. “Did you hear that, Chex? Rhett found the original shitty wizard! The _shittiest_ wizard. She probably didn’t even do any spells.” He laughed and danced around the living room, much to Checkers’s annoyance.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

That evening, Link got an email from Rhett. Attached was a PDF of photocopied, scanned pages of Marguerite’s diary. The image quality wasn’t great, and neither was Marguerite’s handwriting, but after a little while, Link could read it easily enough.

It was fascinating. Mixed in with details about her daughter Nancy’s upcoming wedding (to a guy named Donald, who was nice but not, in Marguerite’s opinion, quite smart enough) were musings about the strange things she’d observed while working alone at night.

Marguerite had been a bit of a researcher herself. She exploited something that both Rhett and Link had noticed--if you were vague enough, other people would acknowledge the strange happenings (Rhett’s friend Stevie when he complained about feeling watched, Link’s officemate noticing him doodling a diagram). Marguerite went around and asked the “old-timers”, some of whom had even worked with machines that used punch cards, if they’d ever had any “unexpected outcomes” while running programs. With some clever phrasing, she found a couple people who admitted to what sounded a lot like magic to Link.

Her theory was that there was something inherent in computing systems that allowed certain people to access what she called “something beyond the knowledge of man” that had always been there, but unreachable. Marguerite went on to write that she thought that perhaps the ancients had tapped into it through things like Stonehenge and, as technology advanced, would be able to use it to great effect.

 _Yeah_ , Link thought. _Like spying on a hot guy._

“So do you think she’s right?” he asked when he called Rhett after reading.

Rhett shrugged. He was sitting on his bed in some floral, farmhouse-y AirBnB that didn’t suit him at all. “I mean, probably? It’s as good as any other theory we’ve got.”

“Yeah, it’s just…” Link sighed. “I dunno, I was just hoping for something more concrete.”

“Look, man, I’m satisfied. I was looking for a needle in a haystack and I found it in four days. _And_ I got a couple good story ideas for my show.” Rhett leaned back on his pillows, giving Link an unflattering view up his nose. “It’s been a productive trip.”

“That’s only because there’s nothing to do in Murray Hill,” Link said.

Rhett laughed. “That may have been a factor. I’m gonna go to Newark tomorrow, eat at some local places, maybe hit up the zoo.”

“We should do stuff like that around here,” Link said. He wasn’t really nervous about initiating things with Rhett anymore, as Rhett had made it clear he enjoyed Link’s company, although Link was still getting a little used to having an actual friend.

An actual soulmate, though, was a completely different matter.


	16. Chapter 16

Rhett: my friend stevie just told me the witch is back from asia

Rhett: her name is kaylee

Link: thats not a very witchy name

Rhett: i know lol

Rhett: but i got her number so if you want to meet up this weekend we can do that

Link: absolutely

Link: ive been DYING to know how she knew

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Kaylee lived in a big beige house surrounded by other big beige houses, in a subdivision where all the streets were named for trees but the only trees to be found were little more than saplings.

“I think she must come from money,” Link said as he pulled up in front of the house on Beech Street. Kaylee lived about forty-five minutes away from either of them, so they’d met up for lunch before heading over to her place. Rhett’s hatchback was still parked at the restaurant. “Or maybe she has some kind of big scam, like Miss Cleo.”

“I think these days if you’re going to scam people, you do it online,” Rhett said as he climbed out of the car. “Like Nigerian princes. I don’t think Kaylee’s a scammer, though. She said it would be fifty bucks for this double reading.”

“Is that cheap?” Link had absolutely no idea how much psychic services cost. 

Rhett shrugged as he rang the doorbell. “Beats me, but that’s what I’m going to pay.” There was a burst of barking and the clatter of nails on hardwood as several small dogs rushed to defend their territory. They heard footsteps and a woman’s voice. The door opened.

“Shut up, this is why you don’t have any friends,” the woman said as she opened the door. “Hey guys, come on in.”

Link stood in the vestibule with Rhett as three Shi Tzus sniffed around their feet. The house was the sort of place that was far too big for the people who lived there, so there were vast areas of open space where the furniture failed to fill the rooms and the framed pictures failed to fill the neutral walls. It certainly wasn’t the witch’s cottage that Link had imagined.

Kaylee didn’t look that witchy, either. She was tan with long blonde hair and had on pink jogging shorts and a t-shirt with something written in Thai on it. The only eldritch things about her were the tattoos on her fingers and forearms, and her fingernails, which were long talons of smokey, translucent black. Link swallowed, imagining those claws digging into his throat.

“So, I remember you,” Kaylee pointed at Rhett before turning to Link. “But you’re new.”

“Yeah, you told me that the creepy feeling I had was a guy with dark hair watching me?” Rhett said. “Well, there he is.” He jerked his thumb at Link, who gave Kaylee a little wave.

“Oh, really?” she said with interest as she led them to a sunny eat-in kitchen and gestured for them to sit at the table. They’d already walked past a formal dining room that was probably only used for Thanksgiving dinner. “How?”

“Well,” Link began as he pulled his chair up to the table. “I downloaded this video game called The Keys to The Kingdom off the internet and it taught me how to do magic and one of the spells was for finding your soulmate, which for me is apparently Rhett.” He and Rhett had discussed this in depth on the ride over and agreed to be straightforward with Kaylee. Her reaction to hearing about magic would tell them a lot.

“A spell, huh?” Kaylee said absently. A familiar blankness settled over her face. “That’s cool.” 

The two men looked at each other, disappointed. The mention of magic had slid off Kaylee as quickly as it did to anyone else. If she really did have some sort of supernatural insight, apparently it didn’t come from The Keys to The Kingdom.

There was a pack of cards on the table, and Kaylee took them out and began shuffling them once she came out of her haze. Link watched, fascinated, as she manipulated the cards effortlessly, despite her long nails. She asked them a few questions as she shuffled, trying to pinpoint what they wanted to know.

“Every card shuffle is unique,” Kaylee said as she spread the cards face down in an arc in front of her, as skillfully as a Vegas dealer. The pattern on the back was the flag of Myanmar. “There are more unique shuffles than there are stars in the universe.”

“Whoa,” Rhett said.

“Mmm-hmm. Now, each of you take a card and turn it over.”

Rhett selected and flipped a card. The Jack of Clubs. Link got the King of Hearts.

Kaylee tapped the Jack of Clubs. “There’s your dark-haired man. An admirer. And this--” her acrylic nail clacked on the King of Hearts “--is a light-haired man. Helpful.”

The two men glanced at each other.

“Now another,” Kaylee said. Link pulled the Two of Hearts and Rhett got the Two of Diamonds.

“This is support from a friend, or a partnership,” Kaylee said of the Two of Hearts, and the Two of Diamonds was, “A change in relationship, maybe another partnership. Pull one more.”

Link had the Nine of Hearts. “Oh, this is a good one. This is a wish granted, whatever the previous cards were.” A fair-haired man, a supportive partnership. Link knew what wish he wanted to be granted.

Rhett’s card was the Three of Clubs. “This is long-term success with another person.”

Link stared down at his cards. A change in a relationship with a fair-haired man, in a way that he wanted. “What does it mean that they’re all hearts?” he asked.

“Hearts are emotional cards, things that are close to you. Home, family, that kind of stuff,” Kaylee explained. “Clubs are positive experiences, and Diamonds are financial.”

“What about Spades?” Rhett asked.

“Spades are struggles and difficulties.”

Link looked at Rhett’s cards. A dark-haired man who was an admirer, a change in relationship, long-term success.

He hoped Kaylee really did have some skill with the cards, because he really liked what had appeared. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

They spent about an hour at Kaylee’s place (actually her parents’ place, it turned out), each with a little dog on their lap as she did a few other card readings, and even offered a palm reading thrown in for free. All the readings indicated the same general thing: a shift in relationship, with long-term success. Kaylee either couldn’t or wouldn’t give details on the relationship, but Link didn’t think she needed to. All those Hearts, a change in relationship with the light-haired man, a granted wish.

“That was, uh, quite something,” Rhett said as they got back in the car. “I don’t believe in cards, but…”

“I know! How did she know some of that stuff? Especially when she did my past.” Link chewed on his lip. He hadn’t really wanted Rhett to know that his first kiss was at a party when he was twenty, and only then because a drunk girl decided she wanted to kiss everyone in the room (or any of the other embarrassing relationship stuff that came up as Kaylee read his cards).

“You shouldn’t be ashamed of any of that stuff,” Rhett said. “It doesn’t reflect badly on you.”

“Easy for you to say,” Link muttered as he started driving back to the restaurant. “You were married for twelve years.”

“Yeah, and we got divorced because getting married at nineteen is stupid, and then spending over a decade fighting and making each other miserable is even stupider.” Rhett shook his head. “Live and learn.”

“I learned I probably shouldn’t be in a relationship, I guess,” Link replied absently as he waited for his turn signal. “They never really work out for me.” There was no reply. Link glanced over to see Rhett looking at him sadly. “What?”

“Is that why you did the spell?”

“Well, _yeah_. You knew that.” _And just look where it got me,_ Link thought. Despite what Kaylee’s cards said, he was still worried about the future of his relationship with Rhett. He couldn’t quite shake the thought that maybe this was all just something created by the game.

They drove in silence the rest of the way to the restaurant. Link found a spot and parked. Instead of getting out, though, Rhett said, “Let’s take a walk.”

Link looked around. The restaurant was in a generic little shopping center. “Where?”

“Doesn’t matter. I just want to talk to you.” Rhett got out and Link followed him, wondering what was on his mind. “What do you think a soulmate is, Link?”

Oh, it was going to be _this_ conversation. “I don’t believe in soulmates,” Link said, a little defensively.

“Even after you did that spell?”

“ _Especially_ after I did that spell.”

Rhett turned to look at him, but Link wouldn’t meet his eyes. “You were lonely.”

“I’ve always been lonely,” Link said.

“Mmm,” Rhett replied. “In Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs, and two heads, but the gods split them in half because they were too powerful, so now we just miserably wander around looking for our other halves.”

“So what’s your point?” Link asked. “You believe in soulmates?”

Rhett shrugged. “Not really, but out of all the people I’ve met in my life, you’d be the best candidate.”

Link stopped dead and gaped at him. “ _Me_?”

“Yeah.”

“What about your wife?”

“You mean my ex-wife?” Rhett laughed at Link’s expression. “Yeah, more than her.”

Link stuffed his hands in his pockets and started walking again. “You barely know me.”

“But I like you, and I feel comfortable around you in a way I can’t really articulate.” Rhett looked over at Link. “But sometimes I feel like you aren’t that comfortable with me?”

“I…” Link looked down at his chukkas and sighed. “I wish it wasn’t called ‘soulmate identifier,’ you know? It’s such a loaded concept. Like, I saw you and I had all these feelings and I was just immediately captivated, but would I feel the same if it said it was a best friend identifier? Were my feelings real or were they influenced because the spell was supposedly showing me my soulmate?”

“So you don’t know how you’re supposed to be feeling?”

“I guess.”

“But how _do_ you feel?” Rhett asked, so gently that Link could have cried.

“Confused, mostly, because yeah, I _do_ like you, and I do feel comfortable around you, but then I’m worried about whether or not it’s manufactured. So please don’t take it personally, okay? I’m still trying to figure it out.”

“Take all the time you need,” Rhett said, and then, to Link’s astonishment, put an arm around Link’s shoulders and pulled him into a side hug. “‘Cause I’ll be here whenever you’re ready.”

Link put his arm around Rhett and squeezed back. It felt so good, so right, that he realized what’d he’d known all along: even if his initial feelings had been manufactured, what he felt now was genuine. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“Mmm-hmm.” Rhett gave him a final squeeze and released Link from the hug. They’d circled the little shopping center and were back at the restaurant parking lot. Rhett started laughing. “You know what I just realized?”

“What?”

“I completely forgot to ask Kaylee how she knew about the glasses. The only thing I really wanted to know…” Rhett shook his head and Link joined in his laughter.


	17. Chapter 17

Rhett: so what are you up to

Link looked around his living room. It was a Wednesday evening. There was an empty cereal bowl on the table, _The Mandalorian_ on the TV, and a cat in his lap.

Link: nothing

Rhett: wanna hang out?

Link: its almost 11

Rhett: [img]

Rhett: [img]

The first picture was a partially finished diagram drawn on nine sheets of graph paper taped together, and the second was a shot of The Keys to The Kingdom.

**PARTNER PRESENCE REQUIRED**

**> >>**

Link: huh

Link: thats new

Rhett: yeah

Rhett: i pretended to be you but it didnt work

Rhett: [img]

**PARTNER PRESENCE REQUIRED**

**> >>hi it’s me link**

**INVALID**

**PARTNER PRESENCE REQUIRED**

**> >>**

Link: lol

Link: maybe this weekend

Rhett: yeah!

Rhett: you can crash on my sofa bed

Link raised his eyebrows at that.

Link: are you inviting me to a sleepover?

Rhett: i guess?

Rhett: its the 10th key you know its going to take a while

Rhett: i just wanna marathon to the end

Rhett: probably should have started with that

Link: yeah maybe

Link: idk let me think about it

Rhett: cmon ill make you chili

Link: lol

Link: ill let you know tomorrow

Rhett: ok

Link put his phone down on top of Checkers, but it slid off his silky coat and onto the cushion. He’d never been to Rhett’s house, because Rhett’s schedule was more flexible and he could start driving to Link’s apartment before rush hour hit. It would be nice to see it in real life instead of the spell window.

Once Rhett got his tenth Key, he was going to build an activator, and once he had his activator, he was going to try the soulmate spell eventually. Link just knew he would. Rhett was probably the most inquisitive person Link had ever met. He wanted to know everything about everything, no matter what.

Link was split on whether he wanted Rhett to do the spell or not. If he did, it would almost certainly show Link and probably be the catalyst for the relationship change that Kaylee’s cards foretold. He very badly wanted to be in a relationship with Rhett, but not because some bullshit computer magic paired them up. Link wanted Rhett to choose him of his own free will.

If Rhett _didn’t_ do the spell, they’d continue to be stuck in their current state of limbo. Link knew that Rhett liked him--he’d explicitly said so. He also knew that he was terrified of making a move. What he had with Rhett felt like the beginning of something really special, and Link didn’t know what he’d do if he messed it up.

And it was up to Link to decide if Rhett could do the spell or not, because he was the one with the whale oil.

He’d have to sleep on it, but Link knew sleep wouldn’t come easily for him tonight.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Link ended up going over to Rhett’s place on Friday night. It was inevitable. After work, he went home and packed an overnight bag, set up the automatic feeder for Checkers, and dug his box of magic supplies out of the closet.

It had been months since Link had had an urge to spy on Rhett with the soulmate spell, and he occasionally needed to reference one of his journals to help Rhett, so he hadn’t bothered to put the box back in storage. In fact, Link had no desire to do _any_ magic. He still doodled little diagrams at work during boring meetings, but that was as far as he got. 

If it hadn’t been for Rhett working through the game, Link didn’t think he would have even thought about it. For something that had been a huge part of his life for over a year, The Keys to The Kingdom itself hadn’t left much of a mark on Link’s life. It was the soulmate spell that had really changed everything.

After an hour-long drive that included a long nervous monologue and some wordless screaming, Link ended up at Rhett’s place. It was a boxy modern three-story faux townhouse with a big flowering vine growing up from next to the door to twine around the railing of a little balcony on the second floor. Link had seen little snippets of Rhett walking out of the house or sitting on his balcony, but this was the first time he’d seen the whole thing. 

He parked in front and got his bag and the box of magic supplies. The flowering vine over the doorway had a fresh, green smell that Link inhaled deeply before ringing the intercom doorbell.

There was an electronic unlocking noise from the door handle and Rhett’s voice came tinnily through the speaker. “Hey! Come in, I’m upstairs in the kitchen.”

Link managed to open the door and get inside without dropping anything. He kicked off his shoes and looked around. The bottom floor was mostly the garage and a staircase leading up, with a little laundry/utility area off to the side. 

Upstairs, the entire floor was one big open space with a living room that flowed into a dining room and open kitchen, where Rhett was busy making what Link assumed was his chili. It smelled amazing. Link dumped his stuff on the floor next to the couch and went over to check it out. 

“Hey,” he said to Rhett. “Is that for the chili?” Link pointed at the peppers that were charring over the gas burner on the stove.

“Yep.” Rhett flipped them over with a pair of tongs. “Ha! Can’t do that on a glass top stove, can ya?”

Link rolled his eyes. “Anything I can help with?”

“Nah, I’m good… Wait!” Rhett plucked the peppers off the flame. “You could get me a beer.”

Link rolled his eyes again and retrieved a couple cans of beer from the fridge. They were some craft brand he’d never heard of. The label pictured two crossed skeleton keys over a keyhole. “Did you just buy these because of the label?” he asked, laughing.

“Yeah. It’s a little hoppy, but not bad.” That was fine with Link, who liked hops. He settled himself on one of the chairs at the breakfast bar and watched Rhett cook. It was comfortable in a way that took Link a little while to identify: there was no time limit. Link was already committed to staying the night, so they could drink as much beer and stay up as late as they wanted.

That ended up being a bit of a problem, because by the time the chili was done, they were both several beers in and more than a little tipsy. The dining room table was covered with Rhett’s giant diagram and all his other supplies, so they took their bowls and cans of beer and sat on the couch.

Several hours later, they were still on the couch, showing each other their favorite stupid internet things on their phones. The coffee table was littered with dishes, empty beer cans, a couple of glasses, and a bottle of whiskey, and Link was drunker than he’d expected to get. “I don’t think we’re going to be very productive tonight,” he said to Rhett.

“To no one’s surprise,” Rhett replied, giggling. He had his stocking feet up on the coffee table. Link had tried convincing him to take his shoes off before doing that, but ended up just prying them off Rhett’s feet and throwing them across the room instead. One was in the kitchen and one was under the dining table. “I _was_ kind of hoping to see some magic tonight, though.”

“I didn’t bring the chestnut board,” Link said. “That’s really the only one I can do.”

“I have all the stuff for the ice cube spell,” Rhett replied. “I just need to borrow your actuator.” 

Link gave him a confused look. “You mean, my activator?”

“Yeah, activator.” Rhett went off to gather his supplies while Link dug out the activator and his printout of the spell. They shoved aside the beer cans and set it up on the coffee table--a glass of ice cubes and Rhett’s great-grandfather’s pocket watch on top of a manila folder. Rhett gravely took the activator, flipped the switch, swapped the position of the two objects, and flipped the switch again. He picked up the glass, sniffed it, and held it out to Link.

“Nothing,” Link said. 

Rhett took another sniff. “Nope.” He put the glass back and slid the activator over in front of Link. “You should try.”

“It’s not my heirloom,” Link protested, but he went through the steps anyway. Predictably, nothing happened. “No magic tonight, man.”

“That’s bullshit,” Rhett complained. He pulled an ice cube out of the glass and crunched it between his teeth. “And it’s a _lie_.”

“Pfft.” Link scoffed and he collapsed back on the couch. “I’m not getting anything done tonight.”

“You could do the soulmate spell!” Rhett fired back.

“Ohhh, I don’t think that would be a good idea.” In his current state, Link couldn’t really articulate why. Part of it was residual shame from spying on Rhett for so long without his knowledge or consent, and part of it was how private and intimate it was.

“Aw, c’mon man.” Rhett thwacked Link’s arm with the back of his hand. “For me?”

“Well…” If there was anyone Link would do it for, it was Rhett. “I don’t have a knife.”

“Say no more.” Rhett got to his feet, only stumbling over them a little, and fetched a steak knife from the kitchen. “This okay?”

“Yeah.” Link cleared some space on the coffee table and ripped the manila folder in half. He put each half on either end on the table, cut up, over, and down, and flipped the switch on his activator.

“It didn’t work,” Rhett said sadly. 

“Just give it a second.” Sure enough, a moment later, the window shimmered into place. Rhett made a wordless sound of surprise. It showed its usual three-quarter view from the left. Both men immediately turned and looked up to where the ‘camera’ would be, but there was nothing there.

Link turned back to the window. The little Rhett in the window was still looking up at the ‘camera’, so Link could clearly see the shocked wonder on his face. It was intensely strange to see himself in the spell window, but he’d be lying if he said there wasn’t something comforting about it. The soulmate spell felt Link was worthy to be shown with Rhett (Link conveniently ignored all the times the spell had shown Rhett with other people).

They sat transfixed, staring at themselves, until the 37 seconds were up and the window dissolved into nothingness. When it was gone, Link glanced over and was shocked to see that Rhett had tears in his eyes.

“Rhett! Are… are you okay?” Link lifted his hand to… do what, exactly? Stroke Rhett’s cheek? He paused for a second, hand suspended in midair, but alcohol and his own desire overrode any better judgement he might have had. Link laid his hand gently on Rhett’s face. His beard was both soft and prickly under Link’s palm. “What’s wrong?”

“That was amazing,” Rhett said, wide-eyed.

“I know!” Link grinned at him. “It’s, like, _real_ magic. Way better than the chestnut spell.”

“Link.” Rhett put his hand over Link’s. “ _You’re_ amazing.”

“I--oof!” Link’s breath was knocked out of him as Rhett pulled him into a tight hug. The hand that was on Rhett’s face ended up draped over Rhett’s back, and his other arm was squished tight against his ribcage. It was simultaneously comforting and incredibly uncomfortable.

Link tried to relax into the embrace. Rhett had his face tucked into the hollow between Link’s neck and shoulder. Link could feel Rhett’s warm breath on his skin and smell the woody, fresh smell of Rhett’s hair. It would have been perfect if his spine wasn’t bent backwards.

“Rhett.” Link rubbed his free hand on Rhett’s back.

“Hmm?” Rhett mumbled into Link’s shoulder.

“You’re amazing too, but I gotta move. I can’t bend like this.” Link wiggled against Rhett’s arms.

“Oh. Okay.” Rhett loosened his grip and slumped over against Link, who manhandled him into a more comfortable position. He ended up stretched out and propped against a pile of throw pillows with Rhett lying partially on top of him, his head on Link’s chest. “I really like you,” he told Link.

“I like you, too.” Link combed his fingers through the short hair on the nape of Rhett’s neck. He wasn’t ready to fully confess his feelings to Rhett, but if Rhett wanted to snuggle up to him on the couch and tell Link how much he liked him, Link was all for it. He did have a question, though. “How drunk are you?”

“Mmm…” There was a pause as Rhett thought. “I am… preeeeetty… drunk.”

“Thought so.” He was certainly drunker than Link, and quickly relaxing in a boneless way that made Link ask, “Are you falling asleep?”

There was no reply, so Link closed his own eyes with a little smile on his face.


	18. Chapter 18

The next time Link opened his eyes, light was streaming in through the french doors that went out to the balcony. The detritus of last night was cleared away from the coffee table, replaced by a sweating glass of ice water. Link sat up and drank it gratefully as he looked around. Rhett was out on the balcony, so Link got up and joined him. “Morning.”

“Hey!” Rhett looked up at him with a grin. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ll be alright once I have some coffee, a couple ibuprofen, and shower,” Link said. He didn’t recover as quickly as he used to, but he hadn’t partied as hard as he used to, either.

“I already made some coffee, and there’s Gatorade in the fridge.”

“What flavor?” Link hated most of them.

“Blue.”

That was not one of the few he liked. Link made a displeased noise and went to fetch himself a cup of coffee. Rhett only had almond milk, so Link took it black. He went back out onto the balcony and stood next to Rhett at the railing. “You seem pretty chipper, given how out of it you were last night.”

Rhett shrugged. “I’ve always been able to bounce back easily. It was great when I was in college.” He laughed. “Last night was the drunkest I’ve been in a while, though.”

“Mm.” Link wrapped his hands around his mug and looked around. All the other houses in Rhett’s neighborhood were the same boxy modern townhouses, but there was some kind of community garden across the street and a few houses down. Link could see a few beds of flowers and vegetables. “Do you grow anything over there?”

“Nah. I gave my plot to a neighbor and she brings me pickles and salsa. It’s a pretty good deal.”

“That’s cool.” Link barely knew any of his neighbors’ names, let alone had enough of a relationship to share food. 

“Yep.” Rhett took a sip of his own coffee. “Wanna get some brunch?”

Link smiled. This was shaping up to be a nice day. “Absolutely.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The glass shower surround and the penny tile floor of the bathroom weren’t a surprise to Link (after all, he’d seen every room of Rhett’s place through the spell window at some time or another), but he _was_ surprised by how high the ceiling was, and that there was a large skylight directly above the shower.

Once Link got the shower controls figured out (always a low point of visiting someone else’s house), he lathered up his hair and imagined what it would be like to take a shower illuminated by a shaft of sunlight. It quickly turned into imagining what Rhett would look like in a sunny shower. Link had never actually managed to catch Rhett naked, although he’d seen him shirtless quite a few times. That quickly turned into a fantasy about _sharing_ a shower with Rhett, which ended with Link cumming onto the steamed-up glass shower wall.

By the time he’d regained his composure, cleaned up, and gotten dressed, Link was starving and more than ready for brunch.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Link suspected that Rhett might not just have invited him over just to work on The Keys to The Kingdom. It was a pretty safe bet, given that Rhett kept saying things like, “I can’t believe I never invited you over before,” and, “We should do this again sometime.” For his part, Link agreed with everything Rhett had to say.

They got to work after brunch. The first order of business was for Link to make his presence known to the game, which he did using the same words Rhett had tried.

**PARTNER PRESENCE REQUIRED**

**> >>hi it’s me link**

**PARTNER PRESENCE ACCEPTED**

“This thing really gives me the creeps sometimes,” Rhett said. “How does it _know_?”

Link just shrugged in reply. The game was inexplicable and unknowable. It was easier for him to just accept it at face value without trying to figure out the _whys_ and _hows_. Rhett, the researcher who wanted to know everything about everything, had a much harder time with that.

Rhett had already mapped out most of the main structures of his diagram. He had a much easier time with the research and riddle portion of the puzzles than Link ever did, but struggled with the fine details of the diagrams. Link was much better at those then Rhett was. He thought all the chemical diagrams he’d drawn throughout his life might have something to do with it.

They worked through the rest of the morning and through lunch, only stopping when they realized how hungry they were. Link was shocked at how quickly the time had passed.

“They say time flies when you’re having fun,” Rhett mumbled through a mouthful of lo mein, which he was eating right out of the delivery container. Link insisted on decanting his own food onto a plate.

“I don’t think I’d classify The Keys as _fun_ ,” Link said drily. It had mostly been a frustrating slog for him.

“I meant working with you, really,” Rhett replied. “We’re a good team.”

Link smiled down at his fried rice. “That’s what the cards said.”

“They also said it was going to be a long-term thing.” Rhett pulled an unidentifiable vegetable out of his lo mein and inspected it with a frown.

“I’m not planning on going anywhere.”

“Are you going to stay tonight?” Rhett asked.

“Oh, um…” Link paused with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth. “I wasn’t really planning to, but I can.” Sleeping in his clothes last night had extended his supply of clean laundry.

“What about Checkers?”

Link raised his eyebrows. That was the first time Rhett had referred to Checkers by his name. “He’s got the automatic food dish. He’ll be fine.”

“Why’d you name him Checkers, anyway?” Rhett asked. “I would have gone with Ace.”

“His spots go black-white-black on one side and white-black-white on the other, so he looks kind of like a checkerboard when you look down at him.” Link said. He shrugged. “It was more apparent when he was tiny.” Link held out his cupped hands to approximate the volume of kitten Checkers.

“He’s pretty okay for a cat, I guess,” Rhett said begrudgingly.

“Well, he loves you.” It was true. Checkers adored Rhett and would follow him around the apartment, waiting for Rhett to sit so he could jump into Rhett’s lap. Rhett would then push Checkers off his lap onto the couch, where Checkers would flop down and snuggle against Rhett’s thigh.

Link was perpetually amused by the Rhett/Checkers interactions. Rhett knew nothing about cats, and he asked the most delightful questions.

_He looks like a dead bug lying on his back like that. Does he want me to rub his belly? Do you give him a bath? I know cats don’t like baths but he’s so clean and he doesn’t smell like anything. Is he purring or growling? Can he eat people food? What does it mean when his ears go like that? Do all cats have green eyes?_

“Do you really think we’re not gonna finish tonight, though?” Link asked. They’d made a huge amount of progress. Rhett was right, they really were a good team.

Rhett shrugged. “I just like hanging out with you, man.”

Link laughed. “I like hanging out with you, too. Ready to get back to work?”

“Yeah, let’s knock this thing out.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Link put down his pen. “It’s all yours now.”

“Man.” Rhett smoothed the taped-together graph paper pages down. The diagram covered all nine sheets, and looked something like a cross between a maze, knotwork, an exponentially more complex version of that cool S thing everyone drew in middle school, and what they now knew was a knitting pattern. There was only one small part unfinished.

Link rested his cheek on his hand and watched as Rhett carefully began filling it in. He looked so solemn and serious, unlike his normal laughing self. This was probably how he looked when he was deep in his research. Link smiled fondly to himself. Rhett was so clever and so sincere. Whatever he did, he did 100%. In a world full of insincerity and irony, his straightforwardness was refreshing.

Rhett glanced up. “What are you grinning about?”

“You’re about to be a shitty wizard, Rhett!” Link said. “I know you’ve been dreaming of it for months.”

Rhett snorted. “More out of stubbornness than anything else at this point, I think.”

“Oh, come on, Rhett!” Link exclaimed. “There’s all kinds of useful applications for magic, like identifying wood, as if anyone who actually needs to identify wood wouldn’t already be able to do it, or finding an object when you already have a pretty good idea of where it is…”

“So useful.” Rhett reached over and tapped the spacebar on his laptop to wake it up. The Keys to The Kingdom was up and running, and for once, it wasn’t requesting any input. He held his hand out for Link to see. “I’m so nervous. Look how shaky I am.”

“Here.” Link took Rhett’s hand and interlaced their fingers. “That better?”

“Yeah.” Rhett gave him a little smile and picked up his pencil with a final glance at his laptop screen. He took a deep breath and connected the last two points on his diagram.

The MIDI fanfare burst from the laptop speakers, making them both jump. Rhett stared, openmouthed, as the ASCII key appeared on the screen and split into ten smaller keys. He turned to Link with wide, astonished eyes. “Link!”

“Yeah?” Link was giddy with pride and delight.

“I’m a shitty wizard!” Rhett shook his hand loose and leapt up to dance around the table. He punched the air. “Yeah! High five!”

Link his hands up for a double high five. Rhett slapped them with a satisfying _smack_ and another “Yeah!” before hauling Link out of his chair.

“Uh, okay,” was all Link could say before Rhett pulled him into a hug that left his toes barely touching the floor. He threw his arms around Rhett’s neck, laughing. “Rhett, be careful!”

“Sorry.” Rhett lowered him so that his feet were on the floor, but didn’t let go of him. Link could feel how quickly his heart was beating. He leaned back a little, his arms still draped over Rhett’s shoulders and Rhett’s hands at his waist, so he could see Rhett’s face. Rhett was even more beautiful ( _beautiful, really_? said a little voice in the back of Link’s mind) than usual. His eyes were bright and sparkly and his cheeks were flushed and rounded. “Hey, I gotta tell you something.”

“Oh?” Link had a goofy grin on his face and was sure he looked as happy as Rhett. Having Rhett’s arms around him felt so right and so good, he never wanted to let go.

“I’m gonna do the soulmate spell.”

Link’s stomach dropped and his anxiety began to flare up. He _knew_ this was going to happen. “Um, okay…”

“But only because I know it’ll show you.”

Link’s brain skidded to a halt. “What?”

“Who else could it possibly be?” Rhett asked, wide-eyed and sincere. “I know you feel it, too.”

“I…” Before he could psyche himself out, Link stood up on his tiptoes and kissed Rhett, realizing as he did so that he’d wanted to do it from the moment he first saw Rhett in the spell window. Rhett kissed back, and it was everything he’d ever wanted.


	19. Chapter 19

“I’ve never done this before.”

“You’re a virgin?”

“No!” Giggles. “With a _man_.”

“Oh. Me neither. I’ve been doing some research, though.”

More giggles. “You _would_.”

“Well, my research said you might like this.” A long moment of silence. “What is that face?”

“It’s weird.”

“Good weird or bad weird?”

“Good… I think…” A gasp. “Oh, it’s good! Keep… keep doing that.”

“Yeah, you like that, don’t you?” More gasps and whimpers. “God, you’re pretty.”

“I… oh my god. Oh my _god._ ”

“That’s it, baby. Just like…” A loud, gasping moan. “Yeah. Just like that.”

More silence, only broken by the sound of someone trying to catch their breath. “Wow.”

“Mmmhmm.” A kiss.

“Guess I’ll have to do some research so I can return the favor next time.”

“Oh, there’s gonna be a next time?”

Laughter. “Shut uuupppp.” 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“So was this your plan all along?” Link asked. “Get me over here and seduce me?”

Rhett laughed. He had an arm around Link, who was snuggled up against him with the blankets pulled up to their chests. “It wasn’t my main objective, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t _an_ objective. I’ve been into you for a while and I know you said you were still figuring it out but… I dunno, it seemed like a good time to be explicit about it. You know, after I won the game but before I did the soulmate spell.”

“While I wasn’t obligated by one or the other, you mean?” Link asked. “Obligated to help you finish the game, obligated to be with you ‘cause we’re soulmates.”

“Yeah,” Rhett said. 

“You’re really going to do that spell?”

“I mean…” Rhett trailed off. “I honestly don’t think I’ll be able to resist.”

“I wonder if you got different PDFs,” Link said. “Since you had different puzzles.”

“Well, let’s go see.” Rhett leaned over the edge of the bed and gathered up the various items of clothing scattered there. Link watched him get dressed. Sometime in the (hopefully) near future, he was going to take his time and really give Rhett’s body the attention it deserved. He should probably do some of his own research first, though.

Back down in the living room, Rhett started the download of the zip file. “It’s still so early,” he said as he bent over the table. “Not even ten.”

“The cards were right,” Link said. “We’re a good team.” He stood a little awkwardly next to the entrance to the kitchen. There had been a huge shift in their relationship, and he wasn’t entirely sure how to act. He wanted Rhett in just about every way one person could want another, and it was pretty clear that Rhett returned most of his feelings, but it wasn’t like Link could shut his anxieties off as easily as flipping a switch. 

“That’s gonna take a while. What should we do instead?” Rhett came over and put an arm around Link’s waist, drawing him close. Link looked up into Rhett’s startlingly green eyes and consciously relaxed into his embrace. Rhett raised a lecherous eyebrow. “Any ideas?”

“I just want to be close to you,” Link said, putting his arms around Rhett’s neck. “Can we do that?”

“Sure.” Rhett kissed Link on his forehead. “We can do whatever you want.”

“Whatever I want?” Link stood up on his tiptoes and kissed Rhett. “That’s what I want.”

“Me too.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Did you have a nice weekend?” Link’s officemate Leslie asked.

“Um, yeah. So remember how I was kind of like--” Link took his hands off his keyboard and made a vague gesture in the air. “--about Rhett?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, um, that’s a thing. Now.”

Leslie cocked her head to the side. “Like, a dating thing?”

“I guess?” That seemed to be an overly casual way of describing his relationship with Rhett, but it wasn’t inaccurate. “I really like him.”

“Old news.” Leslie rolled her eyes. “But for real, I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks.” Link smiled down at his keyboard, thinking about the way Rhett had kissed him goodbye the previous evening. “I’m happy, too.”

And he really was.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Rhett: how tf did they make these in the 70s

Link: right?

Link: if i had to search for everything like i did the whale oil i’d give up

The PDFs Rhett got from the game were exactly the same ones Link got, so Rhett got to work on his activator immediately. Link had his extra odds and ends in the box with his own activator and his journals, so he was able to give Rhett a head start.

He gave Rhett some whale oil, too. It was in the box with everything else, double bagged in plastic and wrapped in bubble wrap. There was really no way Link would have kept it from him, especially not once Rhett dug out a miniature bottle of Tabasco sauce out of the back of his junk drawer.

“It’s so little!” Link said as Rhett rinsed it out. “Like a baby carrot.” Rhett snorted.

Rhett: god bless this uzbek guy selling weird old soviet electronics on ebay

Rhett: shipping is 4 to 6 weeks tho

Link: you're lucky i did all this before you so i could tell you where to look

Link: its like you did a keys speed run bc you had all the cheat codes

Rhett: i know its great

Rhett: you're great

Link: no you’re great

Rhett: we’re both great

Link: we’re both great

Link: fuck beaten

Rhett: haha

It had been three weeks since Rhett had earned his final Key, and they’d spent every weekend together, and met for dinner once or twice during the week. Their relationship had become very serious, very fast. Link was happier than he’d ever been in any of his previous relationships, and Rhett said he felt the same way.

There were only a few things that gave Link pause about their relationship: he felt guilty about leaving Checkers alone for more than a day, Rhett lived an hour away, and there was the uncast soulmate spell, hanging over everything like the Sword of Damocles.

That damn spell! Link had been waiting for months for the question of who Rhett’s soulmate was to be resolved, and now it had a concrete deadline: four to six weeks, assuming the package made it from Tashkent to LA unscathed.

Somehow, there was something about having the end in sight that made it even harder for Link. Knowing that things might change once Rhett cast the soulmate spell made him think he should keep his distance, but he was falling for Rhett more and more every day. Honestly, Link didn’t _want_ to keep his distance. He wanted to be as close to Rhett as possible.

Rhett knew how worried Link was. At first, he tried to reassure Link that no matter what the spell showed, nothing would change, but Link just shook his head. There was no way he could explain to Rhett that no matter what his intentions were, once he cast the spell and looked through the window, all bets were off. It was unlike anything else Link had ever experienced.

Instead, Link just tried to put it at the back of his mind, and he was mostly successful. It was only on his sleepless nights (the same sort of night that led to him landing on The Keys to The Kingdom subreddit) that the thought would pop back up.

_What if what if what if_

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It took five weeks for the package to arrive from Uzbekistan, and then another few days for Rhett to finish assembling his activator. He brought it over to Link’s apartment, even though it was a Tuesday and he had an early meeting the next day.

Link was incredibly nervous, even more so than he had been when Rhett came over for the first time. Rhett noticed as soon as he walked through the door, and he enveloped Link in a tight hug.

“It’s gonna be okay, baby,” Rhett said as he rubbed Link’s back.

“I just want to get this over with,” Link mumbled into his flannel shirt.

“Okay, but I have to show you something first.” Rhett let him go and slung off his backpack. He unzipped it and pulled out a bundle of cloth, which turned out to be a sweatshirt wrapped around his activator. He handed it to Link.

Link sat on the couch and unwrapped the bundle. Rhett’s activator was housed in an old cigar box decorated with a scene of a dapper man smoking a cigar on a bench in what Link assumed was Old Havana. The switch came out of the side of the box. Link lifted it up and inspected it. It looked like an old stove dial, just smaller. “What did this come off of?” he asked.

“I dunno, it was in a box of random junk at Habitat Restore,” Rhett said. “Try it out.”

Link turned the dial. It clicked into place with a crisp _snk_ and a little red light lit up at the end of the dapper man’s cigar. In spite of his anxiety, Link laughed. “Nice.”

“Yeah, I thought it needed a little something extra,” Rhett said as he came back from the kitchen, where he’d helped himself to a handful of pretzel sticks and Link’s paring knife, the same one Link used when he cast the spell himself. “Let’s do this.”

“Okay.” Link sat trembling with his hands clasped between his knees as Rhett snapped a pretzel stick in half and carefully placed each half on the table before taking the knife and cutting up, over, and down to make the window. He pried one of Link’s hands free and interlaced their fingers.

“You ready?” Rhett asked as he put the fingers of his free hand on the dial.

“As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess,” Link said. He felt like he was going to jump out of his skin.

Rhett turned the dial. _Snk_. “Hey, Link. Look at me.”

Link tore his gaze away from the air above the table where the spell window would soon form. Rhett was looking at him with his eyes crinkled up in a soft smile. “Yeah?”

“I love you,” Rhett said. “So much.”

“ _What_?” Out of the corner of his eye, Link saw the spell window shimmer into view. He immediately turned away from Rhett. There was no force on earth that could have stopped him from seeing who Rhett’s soulmate was.

The view was from an odd angle, probably knee height from the right-hand side. It showed a coffee table in front of a couch, and on the couch were two men. One had dark blond curls and a beard and wore a flannel shirt. The other had dark hair and plastic-rimmed glasses. They were holding hands.

“It’s _me_!” Link exclaimed. He shook his hand free and grabbed Rhett’s face and kissed him. “Rhett, it’s me!”

“Of course it’s you,” Rhett said, laughing between kisses. “It’s always been you.”

“I know, it’s just--” Link couldn’t stop laughing. He was giddy with joy and relief. “I dunno, Rhett! But I love you, I love you, I love you.”

The spell window dissolved behind them, and neither one noticed.

~*~*~*~*~**~*~*~*~*~* 

“I have a confession,” Rhett said.

“Hmm?” Link was already half-asleep, with Rhett behind him as the big spoon and Checkers curled up against his stomach. Rhett didn’t really like having the cat sleep in the bedroom, but he liked having Checkers sit outside the door and yell for hours even less. And besides, as Link pointed out, Checkers had been there first.

“I actually did the spell at home before coming over here.” 

That woke Link up a little. He would have twisted around to look at Rhett, but he was more or less pinned in place between his two bedmates, so he just blinked into the dark room. “Why?”

“Because if it hadn’t been you…” Rhett trailed off and sighed. He seemed to be trying to figure out how to phrase something. “I didn’t want to do that to you. I didn’t want to see you see that; I didn’t want you to see _me_ see that.”

“What if it hadn’t been me?” Link asked. He’d been over the scenario a million times in his own head, but had never considered how Rhett would feel about it.

“I dunno.” Link could feel Rhett shrug. “Are you upset, though? That I spied on you?”

“I guess that depends on what I was doing at the time,” Link said as he mentally scrolled through everything he’d done that evening before Rhett showed up.

“You were scooping the litter box.”

“Oh.” Link snorted. “Are you going to spy on me on the regular now?”

“Nah,” Rhett answered. “Although I totally understand why someone would. Being able to see you like that, it’s...”

“Magical?” Link supplied.

“Yeah.” Rhett laughed. “Magical.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost done! Epilogue tomorrow.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue

Link sat on the little balcony with his cup of coffee. There was real milk in it. He’d spent enough time at Rhett’s place over the past eight months that whole milk was now one of Rhett’s standard shopping items. Link used to keep almond milk in his fridge, too, but not anymore. 

Now, he lived with Rhett, officially. Link’s lease had ended and Rhett’s place was not only larger and nicer, it was also closer to Link’s job. Other than figuring out where to put all of Link’s things (which mostly meant Rhett had to go through all his books and research supplies in the second bedroom and actually _edit_ his collection), the only point of contention was Checkers.

To Rhett’s credit, although he was clearly annoyed that Link came as a package deal with a large, naughty cat, he’d never said anything to Link along the lines of, “I don’t want that cat in my house,” and he’d managed to develop a tentative detente with Checkers. Rhett never initiated any contact, but if Checkers jumped up on the couch next to him, Rhett would give him a couple of perfunctory pats. 

Link didn’t actually know where Checkers was at the moment. He’d been locked in the laundry room downstairs overnight and all of the previous day as they’d moved all of Link’s things in. When Link opened the door to give Checkers some breakfast, the cat had zoomed out the door and galloped up the stairs. It was probably the bravest thing Link had ever seen him do, just running off into the unknown like that. Link couldn’t find Checkers when he went upstairs, but there were a thousand places he could hide in the townhouse. His food and litter box were still down in the laundry room, and Link figured he’d emerge at some point.

It was extremely pleasant to sit out on the balcony with his coffee. Link could see Rhett’s neighbor, the one who made the delicious pickles, working in the community garden with a couple of kids and an elderly dog. There was a click behind him. Link turned to see a groggy Rhett with considerable bedhead opening the balcony door.

“Your cat,” Rhett said, affronted, “ _walked_ on me.”

“Yeah, he does that.” Link sipped his coffee. “Did he get your bladder?”

“Yes!”

Link hid his smile by taking another sip of coffee as Rhett scowled at him. “There’s more coffee if you want,” Link volunteered.

Rhett’s mood improved as they drank their coffee and talked about possibly going on a little vacation in the next few weeks.

“I’d like to go back to the Bell archives,” Rhett said. “Maybe see if I can find anyone else like Marguerite.”

“I don’t really want to hang out by myself in Murray Hill while you bury yourself in an archive. And you _know_ that’s what would happen.” There was a tapping noise behind him. Link turned to see Checkers on his hind legs, pawing at the door. He leaned over and turned the door handle.

“No, Link, what are you…” Rhett protested as Checkers came out onto the balcony. “Don’t let him out here!”

“Why?” Link said as Checkers began sniffing around. “It’s not like he can go anywhere.”

“If he gets on the railing he could fall! He fell off the counter last week.”

“Yeah, because I chased him off. He was trying to eat my chicken!” Despite his protests, Link kept a close eye on Checkers as he explored. “Are you really serious about doing more research about magic?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Rhett asked.

“I mean, it hasn’t come up for months.” They’d both beaten The Keys to The Kingdom and the game was stuck at the end screen for both of them, and none of the spells were interesting or useful. After Rhett successfully did the spell that made ice smell like chrysanthemums (“I don’t know what chrysanthemums smell like,” Rhett said as he sniffed the glass, “But that ain’t ice.”), they both lost interest in the whole thing. Or at least Link did.

“I found my activator and my printouts when I was going through my office the other day,” Rhett said. “And I know you brought yours with you.”

“What was I going to do with it? Donate it to the thrift store? It’s a keepsake now, I guess.” Link shrugged. Checkers came over and jumped into his lap. Link patted him absently.

“Well, think about it, Link. Imagine if I could find someone who knew about magic and was still alive! Do you know what I’d give to talk to someone like that?” Rhett was getting wound up into one of his rants. “Maybe they know someone else. Maybe I could find someone who worked on the activator, and learn how it works. I mean, it’s old tech by now, right? From the seventies! You know how far computers have come since then. Imagine if we could make an activator that advanced.” He continued on in that vein for a while, Link nodding and making encouraging noises.

“I have to confess, I honestly have no interest in being a shitty wizard anymore,” Link said. “Or any kind of a wizard, really.”

“Oh… really?” Rhett looked disappointed.

“I got what I wanted out of it.” Link smiled at him and reached out to take Rhett’s hand. “I got you.”

Rhett squeezed Link’s hand. “I’d drown my books if you wanted me to. I want to be with you more than I want to be a wizard.”

Link hurried to reassure him. “That’s not what I meant! If you want to be a wizard, I’ll get you a cloak and a staff and be your assistant.”

Rhett considered that. “Would you wear one of those sequin leotards?”

“That’s magicians, not wizards, but sure.” Link imagined himself in a shimmery, long-sleeve bodysuit with his legs on display, and was amused to find that he kind of liked it. “I might drown that whale oil, though. Send it back to the sea from whence it came.”

“You could give it to that whale museum,” Rhett said. “We could go and do that and then go whale watching.”

“We could do a couple of days of that and a couple days in Murray Hill,” Link offered as a compromise.

“It’s a deal.” Rhett leaned forward to kiss him. Checkers jumped off Link’s lap and disappeared back inside, leaving the shitty wizard and his assistant alone on the balcony with their whole lives ahead of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading and thank you for all the lovely comments.
> 
> A lot of people asked about the magic system and any inspirations, which I mentioned in the comments but here they are again: The idea of manipulating reality with computer code is kind of stolen from "Off To Be The Wizard" by Scott Meyer and the idea of having a little box that does magic when you flip a switch is kind of stolen from "The Long Earth" by Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett, but the mechanics and the way they interact with the system of diagrams is mine.
> 
> I posted a little thing on my tumblr about my writing process: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/pinecontents/627719027503104000
> 
> And Checkers is based on every cat I've ever known, which is a lot, because I've volunteered at a cat shelter for 5+ years.

**Author's Note:**

> visit me on tumblr!  
> @pinecontents


End file.
